Béatrice Dalle first came to cinematic fame in 1986 when she played the female lead in Jean-Jacques Beineix’s controversial but very successful, 37°2 le matin or Betty Blue as it was titled for release outside of France. Prior to that she had been working as a model. In retrospect I realize that I should have known that her beauty would age oddly. Or, maybe that is unfair. Now, at 50 years of age she still carries a distinctly unique sort of beauty. And if I remember correctly, Jean-Jacques Beineix’s did say that he saw “something different” about her. It was that “something different” that led him to cast this unknown and untrained woman as the tragic female lead — which was loaded with challenges. But he sensed a sort of erotic energy that almost scared him. At the time she was involved with Jean-Hugues Anglade, the highly skilled actor who would be in the lead role. A few years after the films release, Beineix’s mentioned that he wanted to capture the intensity of their erotically-fueled relationship. Apparently neither minded that aspect of their jobs in the film.

Beatrice Dalle
French Elle Magazine
Photograph | David Lynch, 2007

Jean-Jacques Beineix’s ultra-erotic story of love, passion, obsession and tragedy shared between a simple repairman and a mentally fragile young woman quickly captured the psyches of two generations of American and UK youth. Betty Blue was beloved equally by both sexes in the late 1980’s. The reason that we loved it so much was tied into the frantic fusion glossy colors, intense romance and graphic sexuality in ways that appealed as much to young women as it did to young men. An odd occurrence. And, none of us had ever seen what appeared to be unsimilated sex mixed with dire romance. And in such vivid and pretty colors?!?!

Beatrice Dalle and the stylish Betty Blue poster found a place on more walls than can be imagined.

For a while young people projected romance and depth onto Betty Blue in the same way that young girls often project misplaced romantic notions onto Sylvia Plath’s work. In my memory it seems like nearly everyone I knew had the Betty Blue poster in their bedrooms, dorm rooms and apartments well into the mid-1990’s. I had only ever seen it once in 1987. But I saw it again in 2010 and just recently. It still somehow feels important. But through my adult eyes Betty Blue feels exploitive and cruel. And, it is more than a little worrying how Jean-Jacques Beineix romanticizes both the uncomfortable obsession and mental illness all at once. Béatrice Dalle and Jean-Hugues Anglade share an erotic chemistry that still wants to melt the plasma monitor of our big screen TV.  Both actors carry disarming cinematic presence, but not in the way I had remembered. Anglade is kind of sexy in a more grounded way that we were not accustomed to leading men in American or British film.

Jean-Hugues Anglade is a very real and sweaty looking leading man for 1986. Betty Blue, Jean-Jacques Beineix.
Cinematography | Jean-François Robin

Béatrice Dalle is not as beautiful as I remember thinking in 1987. Through my adult eyes she still oozes sexuality, but there is seems to a something remotely odd about her that I didn’t notice when I was 19. Is it her teeth? Maybe her eyes? Most likely it is the charismatic, but worrying energy she brings to the screen.

Beatrice Dalle and that something different make their entrance in Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Betty Blue, 1986.
Cinematography | Jean-François Robin

And, yet, close to 30 years later — I still can’t take my eyes off either of them.

Beatrice Dalle & Jean-Hugues Anglade in the morning. Betty Blue, Jean-Jacques Beineix.
Cinematography | Jean-François Robin

But that same erotic intimacy along with the odd mix of actual penetrative sex, love, obsession, insanity and grotesque resolution now border on the offensive. I still can’t pull myself away. Part of it might be nostalgia, but I think there is just “something different” about the movie. I doubt today’s teens would even put up with more than a few minutes. But, I will always hold Betty Blue close to my heart. However, I threw my poster away when I left home in 1990. I would not see Beatrice Dalle again until her memorably unsettling supporting turn in Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day.

Beatrice Dalle about to start a fire in The New French Extreme. Trouble Every Day, Claire Denis, 2001
Cinematography | Agnès Godard

I mentioned this film in my last post regarding The New French Extreme that emerged in the late 1990’s and into the 21 Century. It wasn’t until the credits rolled that I realized that I had just seen “my” Betty Blue do everything from cannibalism to self-destructive pyromania.  Trouble Every Day is an exceptional film. It may go a bit too far, but Denis has her reasons. Mainly, I had to face the fact Beatrice Dalle no loner looked like Betty Blue. Or did she?

Fresh, young, not so innocent and more than a little different. Beatrice Dalle as Betty Blue, Jean-Jacques Beineix. 1986. Cinematography | Jean-François Robin

Let’s be fair, it had been 15 years since I had seen her in anything. And yes, I know what you are thinking. No, I somehow missed Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth. Not sure how, but I did. Anyway, I know I changed a lot in 15 years. But is is disorienting when we see our movie stars age. Though it is probably far more disorienting for them. Beatrice Dalle would be cast in another key supporting role in Claire Denis’ L’intrus and in Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf. While she fit perfectly into Denis’ challenging film world, she seemed a bit out of place in Haneke’s movie. She gave a solid performance, but something about it seemed disconnected from the rest of the cast.

It wouldn’t be long before she re-entered the area of The New French Extreme again. This time Alexandre Bustill and Julien Maury reportedly begged her to star in their brutally surreal À l’intérieur / Inside. Putting the controversies of this film aside, you would be hard pressed to find a more effective actress for the horrific role of La Femme who only utters a few lines throughout the “ordeal” of horror / torture she inflicts. When Beatrice Dalle growls, “Let me in.” — it is truly terrifying. Despite the fact that Bustill and Maury

Beatrice Dalle wants to be let INSIDE, Julien Maury & Alexandre Bustillo, 2007.
Cinematography | Laurent Barès

take the film to a level of disgustingly realistic gore. Before it is all over the gruesome onslaught escalates into an unspeakable act of brutal cruelty. Inside was a major sleeper hit. It has made even more money via the DVD/VOD markets. Inside is so cruel in its violence that I hesitate suggesting it to anyone. But it must be noted that Bustill and Maury created one of the most unnerving, scary and entertaining movies of that year. It is a surreal examination of guilt that has no appropriate boundaries.

“Let me in.” Beatrice Dalle in INSIDE, Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury
Cinematography | Laurent Barès

“Let me in!” Beatrice Dalle in INSIDE, Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury
Cinematography | Laurent Barès

It may go way too far for many, but for those who can stomach it — one hell of an intense, horrifying and surprising ride awaits. A ride that is as metaphorical and surreal as it is repulsively shocking.

Beatrice Dalle & Alysson Paradis’s arm in INSIDE, Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury
Cinematography | Laurent Barès

Beatrice Dalle and Alysson Paradis are both outstanding in their respective roles, but the real success of the film is found in Dalle’s full-on ‘ownership’ of her disturbing presence. It is a slow, steady and all-too human level of insanity that Dalle channels into her character,  La Femme. It serves as a true gift to the filmmakers who utilize her allure to escalate the horror with each movement and minimal comment Dalle makes or states.

Beatrice Dalle’s La Femme takes a cigarette break before she invokes more vengeance. INSIDE, Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury
Cinematography | Laurent Barès

This is one film that is not easily forgotten. In 2010 Dalle once again lent herself to Bustill and Maurys’ world of horror. Released in 2011, Livide failed to achieve the level of success and acclaim that Inside enjoyed. Livide is not extreme, but it is a disturbing and entertaining exorcise in horror. In a supporting role, Dalle once again leveraged her allure to help the filmmaker’s achieve their vision of a post-gothic blood lust.

Beatrice Dalle instructs her pupils in Livide, Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury
Cinematography | Laurent Barès

Livid failed to even gain release in the US/Canada. Though, it has attained a cult status in France and the UK. Rumors of a big budget Hollywood remake continue to spread.

Beatrice Dalle can still see you in Livide, Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury
Cinematography | Laurent Barès

Dalle is one Ballet Instructor you do not want to ignore in Livide, Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury
Cinematography | Laurent Barès

Though, Dalle is given little screen time in Livid, it’s all the time required to set the tone of menace and tension.

To be fair, Beatrice Dalle did warn her little ballerina in Livide, Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury
Cinematography | Laurent Barès

But, Dalle found her way in the leading role of Patric Chiha’s Domain. Released in France in 2009 and the US in 2011, this film perplexed many film critics. In France it was greeted with mixed reviews but generated discussion around the power of Beatrice Dalle — and, perhaps most interestingly, the focus of mathematics’ impact explored within the framework of Chiha’s detached cinematic study. The main reason I sought this film out before it was actually “released” in the US was related American Rebel Film Artist, John Water’s passionate praise. One must understand that much of what John Waters likes about this film is exactly why many will hate it. I loved this movie, but not for anywhere near the same reasons Waters praised it.

Beatrice Dalle stars in Domain, Patric Chiha, 2009.
Cinematography | Pascal Poucet

Patric Chiha’s DOMAIN generates disarming level of tension and the inappropriateness that is constantly brewing beneath the surface as the movie takes the audience on a series of walks. The relationship is between a bored and openly gay 17 year old nephew and his admittedly eccentric aunt, Nadia. Nadia is a respected Mathematician who seems to approach math as a more of a philosophy than a science. Her obsession with the interplay and precision of numbers and logic seem to do more than influence the way she approaches life — it seems to trigger something far more worrying within her psyche. Instead of falling on the Hollywood-like caricature of mathematician or scientist as being “crazy” — Chiha uses Nadia’s mathematical obsession to point out the fact that Nadia is all too aware of her looming descent toward self-destruction which could  be fully induced by her obsessive ideas as easily as by her growing alcoholism. Nadia is not insane, she is surprisingly self aware. Nadia clearly understands that her obsession with the deductive and/or formal theory of the axiom / theorem has inverted and greatly limited her grasp of logic as it relates to daily life. While Chiha is wise is never fully articulating Nadia’s mental and addictive disorders because it allows the audience to specutlate on wether or not Nadia’s fears based in mathematical elements are grounded or have created a perverse manifestation into her inertia and dangerous addictions. It is within the distorted framework of Nadia’s reality that Chiha achieves a perfectly matched level of tempo with his leading lady that lends an even deeper of layer of tension. There is a consistent feeling that her nephew’s love and his need to slip into her life that could potentially lead to her deepest fear: this could be the ideal combination to set off a literal  chaos theory from which she might never escape. Further to the point, that element of chaos could also pull her nephew into a virtual black whole.

Beatrice Dalle’s Nadia’s love of mathematic theory sets the pace of her long walks in Domain, Patric Chiha, 2009.
Cinematography | Pascal Poucet

The pace is often purposely slow. It is thanks to the pace that Nadia and Pierre bond forms in a believable way. Their shared walks through Nadia’s favorite areas of Paris, began to offer the audience insight into her fragile grasp of reality. The walks gradually intensify as Nadia begins to elaborate on logic-based theories that have no rational relationship to the surroundings and topics she discusses. Pierre, just on the cusp of a full adulthood formed within the protective cocoon of the upper-middle class, is still too naive to understand Nadia’s ramblings. To Pierre, his aunt in an enchanting and brilliant woman. It is to Beatrice Dalle’s skill that we pick up the sense that as much as she doesn’t want to pull her nephew into life — His adoration and attention are too enticing for her to reject. Instead of recognizing the vacancy and suspect nature of Nadia’s “friendships” Pierre begins to eroticize them. It is within the confines of what appears to be a gay dance club that the film dips its toe into the surreal.

Nadia leads her nephew into a deceptive world of glam that seems to almost slow to the most minimal level of dance movement. Domain, Patric Chiha, 2009.
Cinematography | Pascal Poucet

It is as if Pierre has slipped into a whole other level of reality as he attempts to find a groove into not only the beat of the dance, but into Nadia’s deconstructed interpretation of the electronic music. As Pierre discovers his aunt’s beat, his perception of reality begins to twist. What appears to be a seedy gay dance club mixes with the cigarette smoke and morphs into an erotic world where everything slows down to equate itself to Nadia’s perverse Theorem. From Pierre’s limited perspective, Nadia is the primary center of this world. It is at this point that an uneasy and inappropriate bond forms between aunt and nephew. Pierre has become a key component in Nadia’s skewed logic of reality. This is a reality ruled entirely by Nadia’s twisted Mathematical Theorem. Once again, she is aware of the problem her life’s equation has created, but there is no turning back for her or Pierre as they begin a danger-fueled and perverse dance. The blunt editing, Pascal Poucet’s self-conscious cinematography, Beatrice Dalle’s performance (in which her strange beauty is just as essential as her casually corrupt read on Nadia) blend seamlessly with the naturalistically innocent charm Isaïe Sultan brings to Pierre and forms into a cinematic stew.  It is stew that tastes a great deal like something from the cinematic alchemy of Chabrol or Hitchcock. This comparison might insult certain lovers of  both iconic filmmakers, buy it rings true.

Beatrice Dalle lost in the pulsating rhythms of number logic in Domain, Patric Chiha, 2009.
Cinematography |
Pascal Poucet

So much walking, thinking and precise living to be done, so little time to waste on comfort. Beatrice Dalle & Isaïe Sultan in Domain, Patric Chiha, 2009.
Cinematography | Pascal Poucet

Béatrice Dalle sensuously pulls Pierre into the slips and slides in her world of mathematical obsessions, perverse pleasures and addictions. For a while his unconditional devotion seems to propel his aunt forward. And despite his mother’s concerned warnings and Nadia’s own instinct to pull away, Pierre is hooked to Nadia’s tragic flamboyancy. As the audience begins to really feel the ever-growing danger. This odd woman is capable of harm. Harm that could come at any moment. It is impossible not to note that over the years Béatrice Dalle’s once unique beauty has taken on an unsettling quality. It is so easy to get lost in her face, movements and voice. Her beauty and eroticism give the feeling that it could all unhinge into something ugly and verge into a Chaos Theory of a whole new logical dimension. It would be foolish to underestimate Béatrice Dalle skill and Patric Chiha’s movie walks, stumbles and titters its way to a conclusion that, depending on the viewer’s sensibilities, could be correctly interpreted as either benignly abrupt or alarmingly horrific. It is to Patric Chiha’s benefit that he applies the same level of precision that Nadia so admires in the measured way he gives us the exact amount of information to pull us in.

Isaïe Sultan gently kisses his aunt, Beatrice Dalle in Domain, Patric Chiha, 2009.
Cinematography | Pascal Poucet

And he carefully dispenses too little for us to really know for sure where he has taken the aunt and her adoring nephew. It is a surprisingly potent conclusion.  Domain has held my attention since I first saw it. I often come back Domain. I always discover new aspects relating to mathematical theories, perceptions, philosophy, cinematography and vexing performances that do more than just engage us — these actors, Béatrice Dalle most notably — threaten us.  The film takes on an almost hypnotic quality.

Beatrice Dalle leads Isaïe Sultan on a series of walks that become more worrying with each step in Domain, Patric Chiha, 2009.
Cinematography | Pascal Poucet

And Patric Chiha’s clever manipulation of tone is consistently creeping with tension and ever-present danger.My admiration for Domain has continued to grow. I’d be surprised for anyone to find it boring. I’d be even more surprised if someone found anything about it that is particularly familiar beyond the clear but loose thread to Chabrol or Hitchcock. Domain occupies its own quirky place. As does the woman who once adored more dorm rooms that we could count.

Béatrice Dalle
Paris, 2007
Photograph | Kate Barry

I want to stress that this should not be taken as a direct quote, but I do know that Béatrice Dalle was once asked how she goes about choosing her roles, films or filmmakers with whom she wants to work. This is from my memory and I haven’t had time to search the Internet to get the actual quote. I seem to remember this question was in relation to the promotion of Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day. But I’m confident in providing a summation of her response which was both immediate and and interesting:

I don’t choose the director as much as the director chooses me. And you must trust the artist and follow where that leads. 

Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession was initially unleashed to its first audience 35 years ago at The Cannes Film Festival. The film and Isabelle Adjani’s performance was and remains the stuff of legend.

“Murder. Evil. Infidelity. Madness.”
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981

She received the festival’s Best Actress Award. The film itself had a profound and lasting impact on Cannes Film Festival audiences.  Many film critics present appeared to like it, but were unable to explain what it was. It defied genre. While many critics liked it, almost as many hated it. Not too long after rumors began to circulate that Adjani had suffered a nervous breakdown which many blamed on the pressures of playing the film’s lead. Initially it seemed that Adjani was eager to promote the film. As the film began to screen in Europe, audience reactions ranged from “confused” to “repulsed” to “angry.”

The Absence of Faith or The Conflict of having it?
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Bruno Nuytten | Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

As French audiences began to dwindle at an alarming rate, Adjani’s attitude toward her role, the movie and the director became critical. It didn’t seem to be a “marketing ploy” — and if it was, Andrzej Zulawski was not happy about it. While I’m unaware of the actor ever directly blaming Zulawski or her role in Possession for what appears to have been a very real breakdown, she never gave a definite answer. It was clear that Adjani was initially eager to work with Zulawski. It was clear she fully understood what she needed to do as the character.

“Do you believe in God?”
Isabelle Adjani appears to moan to the heavens than to pray.
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

If one tries to sort the “gossip” from “truth” — it becomes clear that Adjani gave herself over to this particular role unlike she had ever done before or since. Despite the honor and the acclaim she received for her performance, Adjani seems to have opted to distance herself from the movie as quickly as possible. Since it’s brief release in France, she has never spoken of the experience beyond the implication that she felt she had been manipulated by Zulawski.

Isabelle Adjani
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

The one thing she did state has remained firmly intertwined with Possession‘s history:

Zulawski, Bruno Nuytten (Cinematographer and soon-to-married to the film’s lead actress), Adjani and the crew were assembled under the infamously long and deep passenger tunnel beneath U-Platz der Luftbrücke Subway Station in Berlin. The film’s special effects crew had just fitted Adjani with surprisingly realistic fluid-filled bags. It is doubtful that anyone knew that Isabel Adjani was about to go far and beyond her director’s expectations. Just before Andrzej uttered “Aktion!” Adjani approached him and asked how she should approach the violent seizure as described in her script. He thought about it and was not completely sure how to articulate what he wanted, but the first words that came to his mind and through his lips to Adjani’s ears were essentially that this scene should look like a tribal sort of violent dance.

Reportedly Adjani thought this over for a minute. Turned to her director once more for guidance that was a bit more specific.

“Fuck the air.”

It was with this very direct response Isabelle Adjani would create what would soon become and remains one of – if not the most disturbing scenes in cinematic history. What Adjani does far below the Berlin subway system is almost impossible to describe. I think the aspect of Adjani’s convulsive “dance” is that it never feels false. You don’t need to have ever been to Berlin to realize that she is writhing and slamming about the dirty walls, floor and the air of a real space. This is no film set. It is profoundly repulsive and fascinating all at once. And just as you think this “fit” is over, Adjani begins to drain her rigged bags. Suddenly the entire scene somehow manages to amp-up to a whole new level of horror.

One of if not the most deeply disturbing moments in cinematic history.
Isabelle Adjani
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

The most horrific and disgusting aspect is not the impact of the lo-fi but highly effective bags — it is Adjani’s face, eyes and the sounds she emits as the infamous scene comes to its end.

Distributors pushed Possession out to Europe with a great deal of hesitation. It failed to attract audiences but it was a most definite part of pop culture conversation. It was banned by a large number of European townships. Most unlucky, the UK banned it before it could even find a screen. It would be another 2 years before Possession screened ever so briefly in Manhattan. Another year or so later the film was secured by several different distributors who edited the film to make it shorter, to censor the more “offensive” moments and to re-construct the entire film. Several different versions were released on VHS. These versions make no sense. Yet something remained that made a younger generation more curious. As bad as those VHS versions were, a cult-following was born. It would not be until 1999 that an “uncut” version of Possession would finally find its way to DVD.  It didn’t take long for word to get out that it was not the version as Zulawski intended. It has barely been a year since Mondo-Vision out of Irvine, CA fully restored and issued the actual full length version to DVD/Blu-ray. It has been the first “hit” Mondo-Vision has issued.

“I’m afraid of myself, because I’m the maker of my own evil.”
Isabelle Adjani with knife
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

Even with the passing of 35 years, Possession remains unaged and is still upsetting the viewers.

The most casual mention of it among fellow cinephiles incites repulsion, annoyance, unexpected emotions resulting in adamant claims of misogyny and cinematic atrocity. In 1999, I made the mistake of suggesting a Andrzej Zulawski Retrospective at a film festival board meeting. My suggestion was resoundingly turned-down. I would later chat with several of the board members who were particularly frustrated with my suggestion. I was disappointed to discover that not a single opinion was valid. None of them had ever seen it. One key member of the board told me, “I don’t need to see it. I’ve heard about it for years and it will never screen here.”

Perhaps the most almost violent reaction I’ve witness came from an esteemed and infamous filmmaker herself. Actually she has probably upset as many audiences as Zulawski. She dismissed Possession as  “pretentious meaningless human cruelty disguised as Art House Cinema.” One particularly brave soul pointed out that most of her films could be explained in the same way. I am not sure if he said this to provoke her or to make a point. But her face took on a shade of red I had never seen. She stormed away muttering something about the need for a cigarette.

Isabelle Adjani
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

A week later I found out she hadn’t actually ever seen it. Since then she has and her opinion has taken a dramatic turn. It is rather funny that she now seems convinced that she always knew Possession was a work of “breathtaking cinematic art far ahead of its time!”

It would be unfair to expect an audience to to have an understanding of the artist’s identity or a grasp of how this artist’s identity was formed. The art needs to be able to stand on its own. One should never have to research to access a work of art. There must always be something within it that either entertains or resonates to an audience. But art would be so boring if all of it only served to entertain or resonate. From time to time an artist creates work that is deeply challenging. It is at that time the audience must adjust their eyes to gain more perspective on what is being shown. In the world of Film Art, this is often the case. Not every member of the audience will feel the need to engage with a film beyond the superficial or visual perspectives.

“Because you say “I” for me.”
Isabelle Adjani & Sam Neill
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

But I am one of many who marvel at what a filmmaker sometimes achieves. While we are entertained to a point and we might feel a pull toward resonation — it is not always so easy to identify the “points” or the aspects that try to resonate.

This is especially true when approaching a filmmaker like Andrzej Zulawski. Most of his films are beyond “visual.” Often his films take on an almost epic scale of the visceral.  This is especially true of his films prior to 1999. Zulawski films seem propelled by a frantic intensity that fuses with his equally visual sense which highlights the metaphorical or allegorical aspects of his stories. To fully encage with is work the viewer needs to gain some insight into his life and what has formed his view/philosophy. This allows access to a myriad of meanings lurking just behind or within one of his characters. Most importantly the viewer secures a  perspective on why his films tend to illicit an often mixed bag of reactions. Understanding more about him allows the audience to tap into why what we see matters to us.

As I sit here and attempt to pursue a “request” to articulate my opinion of Andrzej Zulawski, his film Possession and the opposition it continues to generate,  I suspect it is important to note my reality.  All of the factors that have formed my identity is what continually draws me into his specific cinematic world. My fear of narcissism, pity and losing what I think is best called “anonymity” prevent me from sharing what I’m inclined to share. Beside this self-clarification “need” might be beneficial here, but it might just be a “desire” that would work in opposition to what I’ve been asked to convey. It seems like such a basic fact, but I’m often surprised how many people fail to realize that what we see in art is largely derived from what we bring to it. In the case of Film Art, what we project mingles with what is projected on the screen. It is a fundamental understanding of how we relate to art.

Anna coldly discusses philosophy as she pushes a child to hold Allongé. She seems unaware of the childs sounds of pain and horror. It appears to be a ballet lesson, but it sounds like a rape.
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

Yet this core concept escapes a number of people. Suffice to say, that if life has presented a number of fucked-up challenges in life — what resonates or draws you into a art will be very different from someone who has been blessed with easier or more reasonable challenges. This lucky individual is less likely to be immediately drawn into darker examinations of the human experience. It does not mean that this lucky individual should avoid these challenging works, but they might have to work a bit harder to access them.

The slow emergence of “re-evaluation” of Andrzej Zulawski and Possession has been a long time in coming.  In large part this is due to Mondo-Vision’s beautiful restoration work on some of his most vital work. Following a successful run of Possession at New York’s Film Forum in late 2011, two organizations decided to hold retrospectives of the director’s work. If there were any concerns when the Brooklyn Academy of Music held their retrospective in 2012, they vanished as soon as tickets went on sale.

“There is nothing to fear except God, whatever that means to you.”
Isabelle Adjani shares a secret with Heinz Bennent
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

BAM titled their retrospective “Hysterical Excess: Discovering Andrzej Zulawski.” This did not rest easily with the filmmaker. It was because of this title he chose not to attend or participate.

Film Comment‘s Margaret Barton-Fumo spoke with Andrzej Zulawski and asked him how he felt about the BAM’s title, “This is the exact reason I am here in Warsaw and not in New York. I hated it so profoundly, it sounded so base—and I thank you for asking. On the other hand, I understand that these nice good people want to have something catchy. But I’m totally, totally aghast. I’m against this, and this is the reason I never came.”

It is of great import that he takes offense at the use of the word “hysteria” to describe his work. The word has not only taken on a pejorative meaning, it is a politically unethical word choice.  It is so easy to disagree. Both of the central male and female characters seem to be in a state of frantic panic which “hysteria” makes perfect sense. One on of the amazing feats of Adjani’s performance is that she seems to ampying her level of frantically shrill and manic energy up with each passing scene. When we first see “Anna” she appears tensely coiled-up — trying hard to suppress something. A few moments later she has uncoiled and emotions and panic jump from 1 to 10. It is a high wire act without a net in which Isabelle Adjani somehow manages to escalate her “hysteria” well out of measurable range. If the maximum scale is 10, Adjani seems to be closer to 100 by the mid-point of the film. The important difference that offends Zulawski is that he is using a concept of “hysteria” to criticize what causes it. The work is frantic about what culture perceives as “hysteria” — it is unfair to sum up the total of his work to “hysterical excess.” Baron-Fumo was able to discuss the film and the fact that the filmmaker had always called Possession his most “personal” film.

“Love isn’t something you can just switch from channel to channel.”
Sam Neill contemplates the loss of his wife.
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

Zulawski went into great detail of how the disintegration of his marriage seemed to mirror what he saw in Eastern Europe at that time. His response to Baron-Fumo’s questions are exactly as he is — open, honest and extremely articulate. For the filmmaker, Possession is a film he still thinks about in relation to what it means outside his own very private experience. It is clear that he is aware it carries a universal story that morphs into something completely unique, but he is not comfortable in fully addressing this aspect.

“For the first time, you look vulgar to me.”
A married couple on the verge of…
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

His on-going struggle to reflect beyond his 1981 film remains too close to the bone to claim ownership beyond what he sees as a tragic experience that happened in his life. It is clear that he would prefer to dismiss the concepts of metaphors, allegories, horror and surrealism — but Zulawski is far too intelligent not to realize that those concepts exist within the frames of the movie.

No matter where they go, the wall separates Anna and Mark from potential.
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Bruno Nuytten | Cinematography

While he recoils at the word “hysteria” and its origin as misogynistic and psychologically confused attitude toward women. He is equally repulsed at the idea of referring to his work as “excessive.” He does understand the confusion his cinematic world creates. He is self-aware. He continues to feel it essential that the audience understand how these earlier films are rooted in his own experience.

The first half of his filmmaking career is intensely experimental. This visionary and challenging use of cinema seems to be reaching for that idea of compulsive beauty or psychic automatism almost as André Breton defined it in his Surrealist Manifesto. Almost. I am not only uncomfortable in putting too much surrealist emphasis on his work — I suspect that the links to Berton’s philosophy are purely accidental. Andrzej Zulawski makes his own rules and he ends up breaking a lot of unstated “rules” related to depicting “reality.” Zulawski seems to be creating new “rules” as it is difficult to find any level of “the predictable” as he leads us through a perverted idea of “reality.” This is a world that it wound-up in the environment, culture, repression and oppression to which this artist was born. The challenges he experienced formed him into a powerful artist whose vision pushes beyond the realm of anticipated boundaries. In the world of these early films, characters are forever fighting and clawing at reality of world that undervalues the individual as well as the ability to live the life they want to live. They become both victim and victimizer.

“I can’t exist by myself…”
Doppelgänger or projection?
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

This is true of several of his films, but most certainly true of his infamously 1996 film,  Szamanka (She-Shaman) — a film that confused and shocked as much as it entertained. It is also found in the neon-drenched, adrenaline fueled kinetic and insanely unhinged power of 1985’s  L’Amour braque/Mad Love. This loose re-interpretation of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot retains a vital piece of experimental cinema — and those who see it now will realize that much of what they thought was “original” in American mainstream cinema was really directly borrowed from L’Amour braque. Christopher Nolan or Kathryn Bigelow, anyone? But it is Possession that must reflects the imagination and perspective of an artist formed through the fires of a government intent on suppressing and oppressing the individuals caught within it.

Andrzej Zulawski was in 1940 Poland. The great nephew of writer Jerzy Zulawski whose The Lunar Trilogy, it almost seems predictable that Andrzej as Film Artist was pre-destined to clash with the Polish government. He studied the art of film in the world of 1950’s Paris, but returned to Poland to establish himself as an artist. He achieved fame in Poland, but that fame was tied more to the controversy of censorship than art. Eventually he opted to leave his native country in 1972 for France. He quickly established himself as a filmmaker of note. As it can easily be understood, I doubt he has ever gotten over the level of despair he felt as his artistic voice was continually muted, defeated and wasted by his homelands’ government. In France his work was and remains highly regarded. 1975’s L’Important c’est d’aimer / That Most Important Thing: Love remains a classic and beloved film.

But no one was prepared for what he unveiled at The Cannes Film Festival in 1981.

Isabelle Adjani
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

I can easily write “a review” of Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession on RottenTomatoes, IMDB and Letterboxd. Assigning a rating and a quick review is simple. I have done that. As far as I am concerned Possession is a cinematic masterpiece. The challenge is slip into the movie’s frantic energy, darkness and apocalyptic / nihilistic nightmare and still avoid giving out “spoilers.” Because the whole point of the “request” to create this post is to possibly spur more people to see it. And if you did see it and didn’t like it, maybe this post will lead you to “re-evaluate” what you saw.

There are several ways to interpret Zulawski’s notorious and brilliantly insane film. And these meaning are not limited to the director’s sole opinion. He knows this.

On the most superficial level Possession is an exorcise in Horror Surrealism hinged to the psycho-sexual.

From another perspective that directly ties to it’s creator’s intent, it is a depiction of the devastation, rage, despair and horror which divorce can cause for wife, husband and child. The tragic implications of a family destroyed takes the form of of a surreal and metaphorical crisis of identity. As the husband fights to keep the marriage together he only manages to “twist the knife of already fixed pain” for both himself and his wife. The wife slips into a full-tilt conflict over “the auto-piolt” implications of motherhood and deep need to rebel against repression and isolation her marriage has provided.

Isabelle Adjani & Sam Neill
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

As the husband slips into a sort of existential stupor, his wife seeks out sexual validation and the intense need for connection that very quickly leads the audience into the realm of repulsive horror. A horror in which the wife seeks to replace her spouse with something of her own creation. As the husband begins to climb out of his stupor, he starts to sense the implications of his wife’s choice. He tries to protect their son but is faced with his own challenge. His need to recapture his spouse leads him into a less violent but equally disturbing attempt to replace his wife. Of course the most tragic aspect of the situation is their child. He becomes nothing more than a vague symbol to both Anna and Mark.

From another point of view, and this is the one I apply, Possession is a masterful articulation of the dire implications and consequences of forcing identity/identities into a tiny box not of her/his/it’s own design. Under what amounts to mind-numbing surveillance, control, oppression, repression and judgement — the identity/identities are pushed to the point of insanity. A tiny box is not an appropriate home for a human. It is an even more insurmountable task to contain marriage, parenthood, desire, expression, anger, sex and love into a tiny box. Rebellion must occur. But it will not be a sane rebel who emerges. It will be an outrageous blood thirsty psychotic who comes out of that box seeking vengeance, power and a misplaced understanding of love. What comes out of this boxed world is a perversion of humanity. And it is not a human perversion. It is an inflicted perversion created by the very “entity” that creates, seals and surveils the box.

“He’s very tired. He made love to me all night.”
Isabelle Adjani and her spousal replacement.
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten
The Creature by Carlo Rambaldi

It really doesn’t matter how one chooses to interpret Andrzej Zulawski’s  Possession. When the viewer applies thought to the extreme horrors we are shown, the film works from any vantage point.

It goes without saying that Possession is not for all tastes. It most certainly is not for the the faint of heart or the squeamish. And it would be child abuse to allow a child to watch this movie. It is equally important to understand that should you not be shocked, offended, repulsed or even a bit amused by some or most of what you see — Zulawski has failed. It is Andrzej Zulawski’s motivational intent to upset the viewer.  The challenging and disturbing nature of Possession is fact. But it is a mistake to think this film is perverse, misogynistic or meaningless. This film is wrought with meaning and it is a critique / study of why human beings can become perverse or insane.

Love struggles against tierney
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

To deny Possession a place on the shelf of Cinematic Masterpiece within the context of “experimental” would be short-sighted.

Andrzej Zulawski’s cinematic artistry and Possession offer no way out. You have no choice. Both he and his iconic 1981 film refuse to be forgotten.  Possession is true Film Art. And, if anything, it’s validity has never been more potentially viable than now. As we move further into the 21st Century the challenges of individual freedoms, privacy and the ability to control our own lives seem to be mounting against us.

The Oppressed and Repressed invert against themselves.
Sam Neill & Isabelle Adjani
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

Just because the Berlin Wall came down does not mean it will not be reconstructed.

If you have not seen it, seek it out. And if you think you saw it and didn’t like or understand it. Consider a re-evaluation. You might be surprised. I can assure that you will not be bored.

I can’t help but add that should you ever have the opportunity to hear Andrzej Zulawski, Werner Herzog or Wim Wenders speak, always take advantage of it. These three important filmmakers are widely different and yet oddly aligned.  Just listening to each of these filmmakers discuss their work, art or life in general is fascinating. All three are highly intellectual without any air of superiority. A discussion with one of these men is a true experience. One of the aspects of each of these artist is that they do not crave or need your approval. In fact if approached from the perspective of “a fan” that are less likely to respond. These three men — especially Andrzej Zulawki — are very much grounded in reality and logic. They do not thrive in the “celebrity bubble” that encapsulates most of their contemporaries.

Only their work takes flight…

So I find myself coming back to a key scene in Possession where the husband, played by Sam Neill, is essentially interrogated. A question is posed to him, “Does Our Subject Still Wear Pink Socks?”  It is this line that starts the journey into the darkest corners of the human psyche as well as the darkest corners of a world that equates the color of socks to assessing individuality.

Conformity at all cost…
Isabelle Adjani & Another Victim
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

Before you step into the experience of Possession, this might assist you.

“I’m afraid of myself”
Isabelle Adjani
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

Are you ready or not?

FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

I was well acquainted with Jason Banker’s fist film, Toad Road. I love his first film. If you have not seen it, seek it out. Toad Road is streaming via Netflix and AmazonPrime. So I was excited when I had a rare opportunity to see his second and latest movie, Felt, last year. At that time Felt had only had two official screenings. I had no idea regarding the subject of the film when I first saw it.  Felt was so such a jolt of the senses my jaw had fallen leaving my mouth open in a mixed state of awe, confusion and shock. I knew I liked Banker’s new film, but it filled my head with so many ideas, challenged my personal ideas of cinematic reality and was deeply unsettled. I was unable to form a clear opinion to write anything that would matter. This didn’t thrill the individuals who had asked me to write a summary and review. As promotion for the film began I avoided reading any reviews or much in the way of commentary. Aside from a couple of interviews with Jason Banker, I only watched the two trailers.

It would be June of 2015  before Felt would reach San Francisco’s Roxy Cinema. I do not enjoy The Roxy. I’m sorry. I just don’t like seeing movies there.

The Roxy Movie Theatre is a historical building. It is actually the second oldest continuously operating movie theater in the country. The Roxy is an odd experience within and of itself. No matter how hard the owners and the city have tried, years of decay have created an odd atmosphere. There are two screens. One of the screens is sort of disconnected from the other. It almost feels like an after thought from the late 1970’s or the early 1980’s. I’ve never had an enjoyable viewing experience there. I think this is because of all our cinemas, The Roxy tends to attract all groups of The San Francisco Cinematic Audience under one roof.   The San Francisco Cinematic Audience can be a strange mix and one is most likely to encounter it at The Roxy. Situated in the prime real estate of The Mission it is a natural magnet. I break down the SF Cinematic Audience into 3 stereo types:  Hardcore Film Art Cinephiles, SF Hipsters and Fringe Art Eccentrics. Reactions and interactions tend to be “extreme” or “muted dissonance” —  you never quite know what to expect. The one thing you can expect if you see a intense, controversial or polarizing work of art at The Roxy you can anticipate debates and even arguments as you make your way back to Mission Street.

As an example, I attended a screening of Christophe Honoré controversial 2004 film, Ma Mere, at The Roxy.

Ma Mere
Isabelle Huppert
Christophe Honoré, 2005

It was not even a new film. I has seen several years earlier at another old cinema which is now long gone and forgotten. Ma Mere is a challenging and polarizing movie on its own without the added projection of our SF Audience baggage. The theatre was not full. The audience seemed to have an equal number of men to women. All of my Roxy stereotypes were present. Cinephiles, Hipsters and Eccentrics were sharing the space.  The entire audience sat in silence as the credits rolled. I was ready to leave, but I didn’t want to be lectured. So I sat. No one stood up or shuffled in their seats. It was total silence. And then it happened. A long and exaggerated “hiss” was aimed at the screen. Then two more “hissers” joined in.

This is the dreaded San Francisco Hiss. A prime example of our city’s strange sense of entitlement that often “requires” the SF individual to feel the need to hiss at movies, performers or artists if their viewpoints do not align with his/her own. It is as annoying as it is funny. But make no mistake, The San Francisco Hiss is quite serious in intend. It carries more impact here than a “Boo” or a tossed cup. The tricky thing about The San Francisco Hiss is that it tends to set off a chain reaction of one sort or another. I often feel like my fellow citizens feel that his/her own individual opinion is far more important than any other. All one needs to do is ride a MUNI bus from the beach to Union Square to see these clashing “entitlements” go to battle. This often evolves into full-on-rage fueled rants. Inevitably someone is asked to exit the bus. The bus driver must firmly stand his/her ground. The bus stops. It will not move until the one or two individuals who have gone too far step out. Traffic jam ensues. Everyone is late.

Welcome to The New French Extreme
Ma Mere
Louis Garrel and Isabell Huppert
Christophe Honoré, 2004

As one would expect this “hiss” aimed at Ma Mere created anger toward the hissers. By the time the lights came up a highly encaged debate was in full tilt boogie. The hissers were  white male hipsters. Of the five annoyed hiss protestors were two females of the Cinephile type, one male of the Team Eccentric and the other was a woman of the Hipster variety. It was the only screening of the day. I sat and listened in. And I took notes.

“You’ve no right to ruin the experience for the rest of us!’

“Dude! It was the credits!”

“This is an important film! You are both too ignorant to understand it!”

“Oh I think we know pornography when we see it!”

“Fuck you!”

“No Fuck you!”

At this point it was best to quietly walk past them as the poor Manager (of Team Cinephile) was about to attempt to guide the argument out to The Mission. I’m sure everyone made it out fine. It is just the way it tends to be when you go to The Roxy. Especially if it is the last evening screening.

If Ma Mere is polarizing, I’m not sure where this would leave Felt. Jason Banker’s film is beyond “polarizing” — it is an intentional and intense provocation. I decided I would never get to see Felt on a big screen.

I made the right decision. A pal emailed me of his experience at The Roxy after watching Felt. The film profoundly disturbed him. The mixture of hissing and shhh’ing made him leave before the credits were done. As he walked back out to the reality of Mission Street, he noticed three women gathered together discussing the movie. I asked him of which “group” they were members. He was not sure, but he guessed they were fellow Art House Cinephiles. Because of the nature of the film he had just seen he was hesitant to approach these three women who were all hugging themselves. He guessed that all three women were probably somewhere between the ages of 24 and 28. He was most definitely sure that all three of these women were intelligent, cool and “casually” beautiful. My friend put his hands deep into his hoodie’s pockets and asked, “So, how do you all feel about ‘Felt‘?”

Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

Luckily none were offended. He told them about a friend of his having already seen Felt (that would be me) and that I had yet to be able to articulate an opinion. All three women agreed. Felt had left them with a great many mixed emotions. As he prepared to walk away one of the women volunteered, “It’s so weird I hardly ever allow myself to think about it. But I’m always so uncomfortable when I’m in a room with more than a few men.” The other two women nodded in agreement, but none could articulate why. He agreed and mentioned that he got a sense of that feeling in the movie, but he couldn’t find the words. No wanting to seem “lame” he said he thought the movie offered a lot of ideas but didn’t clearly answer why women feel so threatened by men. Mistake.

He wished them a good evening and started walking away and the more assertive of the women called out to him, “Actually, it was in that movie.” The reason is actually very clear in Jason Banker’s movie.

Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

Felt became available for purchase as VOD via iTunes this week. I bought a copy and watched it again.

I hit the Internet and read opinion from Film Critics, fellow bloggers, Letterbox and the fun world of IMDB user postings. Film critics are divided when it comes to Felt. What I find interesting about The Film Critic Response is the information one discovers by reading between their lines. The majority of the reviews seem to be afraid to either fully dismiss or fully praise Felt.

Ben Kenigsberg’s New York Times review stuck me as being particularly off-mark. Due to The Times recent policy change related to which films are reviewed, it says a lot that they opted to even review Felt. Their current logic in what films they will review and which films they will not review is more than a little confused, but I am impressed that Felt was considered.

Amy Everson
Super Hero?
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

Kenigsberg summed up Felt, “Reading about the filmmakers’ intentions is more rewarding than watching the results.”  Meaning that The New York Times “felt” that Felt‘s cinematic intention had to be praised, but this critic seemed to need to find something about Jason Banker’s movie that would allow him not to praise the over-all result. I write this because Kenigsberg’s deconstruction of Felt feels almost painfully weak. He assigns a generally unfavorable review by taking aim at Banker’s “ambiguities.” Mr. Kenigsberg  even goes so far as to challenge the title of the film. He expressed confusion about whether he should view the title as a noun or a verb. The title is no riddle. There is nothing “ambiguous” about it. A sixth grade child would be able to understand that the title of this movie is intentionally both a noun and a verb. Felt is filled with ambiguities. The title is not one of them. Felt‘s ambiguities are intentional. Even if an individual dislikes the film, he/she will note the the “ambiguities” are a major reason that the film holds interest. The “unstated” within Banker’s Felt is what makes it a true cinematic experience.

As I read Ben Kenigsberg’s review two points emerged:

1. It is not the ambiguity that bothers him, his real issue is the uncomfortable cultural statement Felt asserts.

2. He doesn’t care for Amy Everson’s artwork. He actually seems to hate it. It disturbs him.

Everything about Jason Banker’s Felt is intended to unsettle, uncomforted, disturb and it requires both women and men to think about the ways in which we play into a system not of our own design. What the film presents is not a new problem. It is both a cultural and societal issue that has become so deeply entrenched that a jolt is needed to wake people up. I’m not trying to state that a movie is going to change anything, but this film just might be a catalyst for many to reconsider how they interact with the opposite sex.

Please note: I’ve nothing against Ben Kenigssberg. I think he is a sound, educated and professional Film Critic. His intelligence shines, but if he dislikes Felt he has failed to actually defend his position. I wanted to highlight his review because he is a member of a team of film critics who I admire. Unfortunately, he is one of many who have chosen to take the “safest” route to disregard this film. Most of these “safe-routed” dismissals fail to point out any credible reason to dislike the film. In fact the majority of bad reviews are not hinged on any real merit.

Only a handful of the bad reviews took a firm ground.

A Borrowed Gender
Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

Marjorie Baumgarten of The Austin Chronicle is reasonable in her dismissal of Felt. While she has no problem admitting to the film’s intended provocation and import of ideas, she found the movie to be stylized in a manner too obvious for her taste. There were also a couple of Film Critics who saw the potential of a great film, but disliked Jason Banker’s choice of improvisational dialogue. I don’t agree with either viewpoints, but I can understand these opinions. This is logical film criticism. It is also the sort of criticism that often met John Cassavetes. None of his films were actually “improvised” but they all felt like it. And Cassavetes never “rushed” the pace of a movie. Many critics disliked a great deal of his work. But those who were brave enough to embrace it bear out the winners in Film Theory. You would be hard pressed to find a Film Critic who would trash a Cassavetes film now. Robert Altman also received a number of negative reviews in his day for many of the same reasons.

Film Critic, Jenni Miller of A/V Club gave Felt a positive review. Her summation is that Jason Banker’s movie might be a little too close to the bone to enjoy, but this is outweighed by the significance of what is being conveyed. Miller doesn’t need to “enjoy” a movie to see its value. When she writes that Felt “sneaks up on you and lingers…”

Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

she is able to state the power of the film. In the end she assigns a “B” rating, but it seems given with a firm warning that this was no fun for her — and it may be equally un-fun for you.

Of the few truly positive reviews Felt received, The Village Voice‘s Diana Clarke actually formulates her words in the way I so wish I could formulate my own.

Her review can be found here: http://www.villagevoice.com/film/in-daring-indie-felt-a-young-woman-seizes-rich-dudes-masculinity-7290019

Andrew O’Hehir of Salan.com is one of the few critics who liked the film. He clearly put some thought into what he wrote. Of course, this is his job. He also makes a potent reference to recent mainstream movies that almost seem to celebrate Rape Culture. Like Ted 2. I was particularly impressed when I saw that Rotten Tomatoes chose this O’Hehir quote: “Some viewers will no doubt find “Felt” maddening because it never answers seemingly crucial plot questions that a normal movie or TV show would feel compelled to clear up. That ambiguity is precisely the source of its power, and its cinematic quality.”

Ben Kenigssberg, can you hear Andrew O’Hehir? This is Film Theory 101. Ouch. Maybe I am picking on Ben. I’m sorry.

If any of the Film Critics I know happen to read this, please start assigning a rating to your reviews. It sucks, but this is now a full world of Film by Consensus. Rotten Tomatoes is assigning their own rating to many of your reviews. And they are not accurate most of the time. Take head of The New York Times and A/V Club. Do not let RT decide the rating of your review.

Playing with fire…
Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

The most disturbing thing I noticed regarding The Public Reaction was the number of women who were angered by not only Banker’s film but by the idea of Feminism itself. There are a lot of women out there who view Amy Everson as the enemy. This caught me off guard. It doesn’t surprise me that a number of “dudes” out there hate the movie. It would also not surprise me if a good number of women disliked it. Art is subjective. And Film Art this provocative is not always going to win everyone’s heart. But I am shocked at the level of female anger toward Feminism. I don’t get it. But then, I am puzzled by hate in general. It is so very extreme. The level of hate “out there” is staggering, but the level of misogyny and self-loathing is even more horrifying.

Jason Banker, the filmmaker who made the most out of a tragic and senseless tragedy into a surrealistic experimental horror film we know to be Toad Road, has now matured into a far more self-assured Film Artist. A potent Cinematographer as well, Banker brings a great deal of talent to the table. Felt came about thanks to accidental meeting between Amy Everson and Banker. During a visit to San Francisco, Everson caught Banker’s attention because of her playful yet aggressive demeanor — and the fact that she was running around the city in one of her provocative costumes.  As I understand it, Everson showed her artwork to Banker. The work he first saw was all contained in her bedroom. A hybrid of “Sesame Street” kitsch intertwined with sex toys, phallic symbols, dildos, vaginas, assholes and soft doll-like re-enactments of menace. All or much of the work utilizing felt as a key media. Amy Everson is brilliantly talented, fearless and a provocateur. Even the seemingly most innocent creation achieves a vaguely erotic danger.

Art by Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

Her work is often tinged with a twisted sort of humor and some of it is just deeply disturbing.

Although, I share my life with a San Francisco artist and know a good many, I’ve only heard/read her name a couple of times. There is a whole other aspect to her work which incorporates Performance Art with her costume creations. Jason Banker was equally impressed as he was disturbed. It was from this jumping point that the two artists began to collaborate toward what would become Felt.

Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

If you are interested in Amy Everson’s art, a link to her website is below. She is a completely unique and important voice. Check it out, but please don’t “flame” her. It takes a whole lot of guts to lay your soul out for all to see. As I look at her work, it seems to me she is sharing some very intensely intimate glimpses into her being. I’m sure the recent release of Felt has been more than a bit challenging. Though, I hope it has been rewarding.

http://www.amyeverson.com

And now, my opinion/review for Felt:

Jason Banker’s film begins with a painfully thin young adult woman who appears to have fallen into a deep depression. We first hear her voice in the form of narration. Her voice sounds a bit like “a little girl” yet what her voice delivers is a firm thud of certainty  “My life is a fucking nightmare.” BAM! It is this line that propels us forward into not only into the film, but her mind.

Amy Everson is more than the film’s lead actor. She also shares “co-writing” credit with Jason Banker.  And she is doing more than playing a character, the film’s core ideas are based not only on her artwork, but certain aspects of her  personality. Amy Everson is playing a “fictionalized” version of herself. While it is sometimes clear she is not a trained actor, she carries a great deal of charisma. You want to watch and understand this character. You want to try and like her.

“My life is a fucking nightmare.”
Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

Felt‘s Amy has survived some form of sexual abuse. The actual abuse is never stated or confirmed, but it seems obvious. Her friends want to help her, but are growing weary of her artistic and creative coping skills. Not only have these coping skills become isolating, they seem to have opened some dark portal into which she falling. These pieces of art and the costumes she creates are disturbing, provocative and somehow menacing and they are fusing into her identity. She has become dazed, lonely and nihilistically numb. Amy’s costumes allowed her to access inner-strength. Their designed to not only give her a sense of worth and purpose, it feels as if they were initially conceived to act as healing tools with which she might be able to push away her fears of men.

“Amy” has found a way to funnel her anger and fears through her art. But now, these subversively-twisted anatomically-“correct” costumes offer no comfort. By the time we enter her story what were once empowering tools for healing have turned against her as well as against others. She has taken on an inappropriate role of “protector” for her friends from the men in their lives. Her artistic expression of comfort are turning into a weapon. Her isolation within these “armors” made of felt and other materials is starting to fuel a fantastical idea which is taking over her reality. She has taken to wearing her costumes beneath her street clothing. She wanders off into private corners of nature within the Bay Area and Redwood forests where she can strip down and assert her power with a wooden sword. While on a walk with a girlfriend, the friend tries to encage Amy in a conversation about her friends’ concerns.

“You have to be very delicate…”
Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

But Amy has already put on her mask and just as quickly has unzipped her pants to brandish her swollen plastic penis. Her friend tries to reason with Amy to no avail. All her friend can do is force her keep her clothes before she can make a break and run away. Before she rushes off Amy shares an alarmingly sincere desire for the two of them to become “Super Heroes” committed on seeking vengeance against all the predators society calls men.

Jason Banker is very careful to limit the information we receive and how we receive it. At times Felt may not be “linear.” Other times it could be argued that what we see may only be within the confines of Amy’s damaged psyche.  This is not a flaw. This is a smart move on Banker’s part. It allows the audience to form individual conclusions and to assess the situations as they unfold. We see Amy in several scenes with single men of her own age. In one scene she is alone with an ill-advised OKCupid Match-Up from Hell. Other scenes she shares these experiences with her girlfriends. These scenes of interaction with ‘normal’ men feel so real it almost hurts to watch. Each interaction reveals aspects of male behavior about, toward and with women that we might not always pick up were it not for Banker’s camera. The truth is these scenes feel “real” and it is alarming to note the way the men attempt to manipulate, control and harass the women. What might feel “normal” is now unsettling. The men Amy meets are dismissive, aggressive, inappropriate and passively menacing. If there is even an initial “friendliness,” it quickly feels false.

Is this hope?
Amy Everson / Kentucker Audley
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

In another scene she meets her best friend’s new boyfriend. Amy is nervous and is unable to adequately hid her insecurity. Her friend’s boyfriend immediately chooses to make fun of her and insinuates that she is nothing more than a spoiled entitled bitch. A few minutes later the boyfriend is pissed as Amy’s girlfriend chides him for being mean to her best friend. His response is in the form of humor. He disagrees. He wants to know why his girlfriend is friends with such a “freak” and he teasingly wraps his hand around her neck warning her to not to hang out crazy “bitches.” Amy immediately attempts to attack him for threatening her friend. This new boyfriend chooses to meet her aggression with an even stronger level of anger and threat. To him, Amy is a “crazy bitch” and he informs her that just because she is a “girl” will not prevent him from taking her down.

Later, her girlfriends sit down with her. One attempts to “lay hands” on her with a prayer for healing. Once again they try to reason her to understand that these men are “not all that bad” — they just want sex. But the hope is that they might want more down the road. Their intervention backfires on them as Amy stays calm and points out the obvious. Her girlfriends seem to be “aware” of the cruel, debasing and threatening attitude. It appears it is easier to just “accept” this cultural misogyny. Amy’s more well-adjusted and functioning friends have and are assimilating into “Rape Culture.”

Kentucker Audley plays “Kenny.” Kenny’s arrival into Amy’s life comes with tenderness, understanding and concern. He comforts her. He cares about her. He is able to show that he is impressed with her art while also expressing sadness for whatever pain life has given her. Kenny never does this in a patronizing way. He truly appreciates her artistry and her.  When she speaks to him he actually listens. Eventually, Amy is not threatened by Kenny. She seems to be healing as she discovers that she can be herself with him and he offers no judgement. He offers no threat. Kenny seems to offer only love.

Amy Everson and Kentucker Audley
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

It is never clear if Amy and Kenny have consummated their relationship. Just as it seems we might be given this information regarding their romance, we discover that Kenny is not what he seems. It is unclear, but he has not been deceptive with Amy. When he attempts to open up and discuss this deception, it is too late.  Amy’s discovery of Kenny’s “deception” alters not only her perception of him. It seems to send her off-the-rails of sanity. And everything Amy shifts. Every little gesture seems to convey something different than before. We see everything about her change.

As she leads the audience into an act of horrific violence, it is not a surprise. Everything seems to be pointing to something horrible, but witnessing it is profoundly unsettling.

Playing ‘Dress Up’
Amy Everson / Kentucker Audley
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

Jason Banker’s film leaves the audience in a state of shock that is not scary. It is far more serious. We are left adrift in Amy’s madness. The “victim” has become an even worse “victimizer.” It brings us back to a scene in which she explains to Kenny that most forms of rape “are perpetuated by people you know and trust.”

There is no way Kenny would have interpreted Amy’s comment as a warning. It might not have even been clear to her.  Amy’s decision is not rational. It is insane.

Provocative, disturbing, challenging, oddly beautiful and repulsively ugly, Felt is one of the clearest articulations of our culture’s continuing escalation of violence against women. “Rape Culture” is not some “hip” catch-phrase. It is a sad reality in which many of us play without even realizing. Jason Banker has crafted a firm depiction of cultural misogyny that never seems to wain. He has done so within the framework of Art Horror. The artistic mastery of this film can’t be denied.

Into the woods…
Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

The implications of Felt‘s result leave us with one question:

How does a sexual assault victim heal in a world that almost seems to support the assault?

Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

And for those who thought Jason Banker’s feature film directorial debut, Toad Road, was an accident or a “one hit” cinematic wonder, Felt blows any doubt of possessing an important cinematic filmmaker out the window.  This Film Artist is not limited in his scope of obtaining  understanding from more than one perspective. This is a filmmaker to watch.

matty stanfield, 7.22.2015

By 1995 Communist Poland was long gone. The state no longer restricted the artist or oppressed it’s people. Capitalism was to be embraced. Along with this sudden shift in economy and freedom came many challenges. For the Film Artist, there seemed to be a freedom. A cinema without restriction.

In reality, the entire Polish infrastructure was unstable. The state no longer funded the arts. Film had to be funded privately. However, there was no real film studio or film producers wiling to fund much beyond silly comedies, biographies and other projects that criticized the former Communist regime. When Andrzej Zulawski returned to Poland to film Szamanka (She-Shaman), he had to secure funding from France and Switzerland in order to bring his vision to the screen.

Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Art | Jean-Philippe Guigou

Those of you reading this most likely know who Andrzej Zulawski is, but despite his genius and success he remains a largely marginalized film artist. Best known and accepted in France, he obtained some degree of success there. In the US and the UK he is best known for leading Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neil into the dark, disturbing, twisted and innovative cult film, Possession. If that controversial and infamous 1981 film is his most personal work, where does that place Szamanka?

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

This might be one of his more philosophical films, but it is unquestionably his most sexually obsessed film. Looking at the movie from a strictly surface perspective (a mistake when it comes to the films of Andrzej Zulawski) this could be interpreted as a frantically impulsive sexual relationship between a wounded and angry Anthropologist and a clearly disturbed young woman. A sort of demented take on the battle of the sexes. However, this is far too simplistic a way to watch or understand this erotic film that hinges on apocalyptic horror.

Passion, love, madness or taming evil?
Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

If you’ve not heard of Szamanka or seen it, it is likely due to the fact that upon its release it faced an incredible amount of rage from the Polish Catholic Church. Censorship by the State of Poland may have ended, but a new form of repression had sprung up in the form of Post-Communist Catholic Poland. This tale derived from the ideas of Polish writer, Stanislaw Przybyszewski and his controversial coining of the phrase, Naked Soul and Zulawskis’s desire to wake up the Polish masses with his own sort of “Santanic Antidote” to his two contemporaries of Polish Cinema. While both Kieslowski Krzysztof and Zanussi Krzysztof were both brilliant filmmakers, from the ideology of Zulawski were playing into some spiritual idea to which he took exception.

Who is the Sadist? Who is the Masochist? Or, is this demonic possession?
Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Filled with contradictory ideas around Catholicism, good, evil, sexuality and love this film faced a whole new level of censorship that Zulawski had never faced. Communist Rule was tough, but the unbridled adherence of Religion truly knows no bounds. The film is so graphic sexually that it probably would have been banned anyway, but the controversial ideas of this philosophical, mystical and erotic journey remain blasphemous. The Polish community almost immediately began to call this film The Last Tango in Warsaw. Even though they had not seen it, this was and remains the oft-mentioned joke about Szamanka.

The film has been compared to Lars von Trier’s controversial, Antichrist, in that it depicts a male who suffers the wrath and sexual rage of his female wife. Antichrist plays with ideas around cultural misogyny and grief in equal measure. Like Lars von Trier, Zulawski has been accused of misogyny. The problem with this accusation is that it doesn’t hold up when one watches Szamanka with some knowledge of where it’s maker is coming from and where the film ultimately takes us. It is also important to note that the screenplay was written by Manuela Gretkowska, a young Feminist and acclaimed writer who played a key role in founding The Polish Women’s Party. Certainly Andrzej Zulawski pushes forward his own agenda, but he never veered far from Gretkowska’s script.

Rumors that this was real and not simulated sex has earned the film the nickname of “The Last Tango in Warsaw”
Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Boguslaw Linda was an established Polish movie star when he was cast as Michal, the unhappy and profoundly conflicted anthropologist who has just come into the job of investigating the rarest of anthropological finds. There are more than a few stories about the casting of the female lead. Zulawski was not known to work with “unknowns” or “untrained” actors, but something about Iwona Petry’s beauty and presence deeply fascinated Zulawski. She was just barely twenty years of age when he saw her ordering a cup of coffee. Described as a bit eccentric and a strict vegetarian, Zulawski convinced her that she was meant to be his star and to play the role of Wloszka / The Italian.

An unforgettable cinematic presence and debut which would be her final turn in front of film cameras.
Iwona Petry as Wloszka AKA “The Italian”
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

While Szamanka was a huge critical and commercial failure in Poland — largely because the Polish Catholic Church. Honestly, the film was never even given a chance to screen much at all due to protests and the ultimate banning of the film. However the film scored incredibly well in Italy and France. It was expected that Petry would be a major and perhaps first true Polish female movie star. She didn’t. In fact she has become a huge part of this movie’s infamy. During production the Polish media had a frenzy in reporting that Zulawski was manipulating, forcing and abusing the young woman. Rumors ranged from beatings to forced sex to psychological torture.

Looking back at the situation, it would seem that Zulawski’s dark sense of humor had some fun playing with what were clearly rumors. When the film finally screened to great acclaim at the 1996 Venice Film Festival, Zulawski answered the charges with his typical blunt intellect. There was no truth to any of it. Yet another ploy to set the film up by the oppressive Polish Catholic Church.

Religious symbology and Mysticism loom constantly around these two rage-filled lovers.
Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

However, Iwona Petry failed to show up for the premiere. She actually went missing for a short while. Apparently exhausted from the tough shoot and terrified by the media attention she took her money and ran off to India. In 1998 she gave a few interviews and admitted that the sudden brush with fame was far more than she had bargained. A roll of eyes to the rumors that continue in Poland to present day. She returned to university and is now a published fiction writer. She has no interest in returning to the world of acting.

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

This is a shame as her performance in the film is quite impressive. Iwona Petry had the presence of a movie star and she played the role of the She-Shamen with an almost insane level of erotic energy. One hardly has time to notice the well-trained middle-aged Boguslaw Linda. When Petry is on screen, it is she you watch. And, no. She is not nude the entire time. It is an interesting and terrifying performance. Once you see this odd film, you will never forget her.

Most importantly, you will never forget Szamanka.

The anthropological find of a lifetime: a nude mummified Shaman covered in mystical tattoos and a pouch of ancient hallucinogenic mushrooms
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Boguslaw Linda’s Michal is a frustrated scientist about to marry a woman for whom he feels no love or passion. During an unseen excavation with his students, a mummy is discovered. It is determined that this mummy is close to 2,000 years old. Michal’s interest in this mummy goes far beyond the academic or scientific when he discovers this is the body of a Shaman.

Touching, connecting and trying to merge with God
Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

The body is incredibly well preserved. Covered in mystical tattoos, they also find a pouch full of what turns out to be  hallucinogenic mushrooms. While Michal and his team try desperately to understand the cause of the Shaman’s death, there is only one clue: the back of the Shaman’s skull is crushed. This does not signal the cause of death but an ancient pagan ritual in which after death, the Shaman’s skull is opened to release the potent spirit free.

Andrzej Jaroszewicz’s camera seems to be drawn to offering us views of the Shaman’s rather pronounced penis. And Michal is unable to hold back. He breaks protocol and touches the Shaman with his bare hands. Clearly there is a sense of connection for Michal, but the reason for this is not entirely clear to us or him. It is as if he wants to find a way to truly connect with this ancient dead being. This need verges toward the sexual.

What secrets and powers are hidden in the Shaman mummy?
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

The Anthropologist and his mummy are a a constant subplot of the film. The main interest is on the strange young woman who captures the lustful attentions of the scientist almost as strongly as the mystical-pull of the Shaman. A rude and socially inept, but beautiful woman. We first see Petry’s The Italian as she lunges and plunges her way along a buffet of food which she shovels into her mouth and down her throat as if her hunger can never be satisfied.

Erotic desire beyond reason…
Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

She is to rent an apartment owned by Michal. The modest flat was formerly occupied by his brother. The Italian wants the apartment. The deal is done, but signed with a frantic and brutal sort of sex that feels as angry as lust-driven. Like the mummy, Michal seems to want to somehow merge more into this beautiful girl than sexual penetration will allow. And like with her food, The Italian’s erotic desire seems to be unhinged and impossible to satisfy.

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Between the ever-mounting frenzied levels of brute force, kink, domination, submission, pain and pleasure, Michal attempts to communicate with this woman of his sexual dreams. She, however, seems more concerned with her consuming passion and seeks more to “commune” than communicate. She is obsessed with him and seems to ache to form a possession of his desires. Not articulate, but psychical in her nature.

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Michal is becoming more and more obsessed with her. He attempts to discuss philosophy with her but to not ready interest. He discusses religion with disdain. Here she seems a bit more interested, but it always comes down to sex. Our Anthropologist suspects his fever-pitched lover might be no more than a beautiful idiot. The Italian seems unable to offer him nothing more than hot sex. He wants more.

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

“You see, that’s why there are common saints, just God’s morons with a soul. No brains.”

This sort of comment seems to cause a pulse within the ever-sexually-rabid woman. And as hard as Michal seems to want to walk away from her, he simply can’t. She mystifies him. Occupies his thoughts. Drives him to rage-fueled sexual encounters. The sex becomes desperate. Yet for her, the sex is almost magical. A sort of erotic ritual.

Michal watches his sleeping lover. Or is she something less or more?
Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

He finds himself more miserable with her than he had been with his loveless marriage potential. The mummy no longer holds the power over him. This crude, intolerant, polymorphously perverse, tyrannical and hysterical woman seems to offer an inexplicable power over him.

This is not just unrestrained passion, this is something sinister.

Or is it possibly something that offers our Anthropologist a meaning to his existentially challenged existence. He no longer fits in. Poland offers opportunity, but it seems a false promise. His mummy holds no answers. But there seems to be something bleakly powerful in these cruel sexual encounters. The Italian becomes transformed. Already beautiful, during sex she seems to become transformed to the level of sexual goddess. But the orgasm appears to be more like gasoline tossed on some spiritual fire.

There is no pay off or hope in this sex.

Defile.
Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

And as this deeply odd but impossibly fascinating Art House film pulls us deep into this mire of confusion, identity crisis, sexual obsessions, perversions and religious conflict. It is also as the film enters it’s third and final act that Zulawski and Manuela Gretkowska push us into the dark theatrical thinking of Stanislaw Przybyszewski and his outright Satanic symbolism.

For Przybyszewski there is no such thing as “love,” it is nothing but a magical illusion. When Michal meets The Italian he his helpless. There can be no free will here. Michal cannot turn away from his She-Shamen even when he seems to realize this girl’s insanity is something of a mystical and most-likely demonic nature. He is rendered to the state of the somnambulistic when it comes to this darkly magik lover who seems to have access to fully influence him to the very core of his being. This “love” is truly apocalyptic. It does not seem to matter if the She-Shaman influences for good or evil. If her ritualistic sex is served for healing or wounding. For Michal has no choice in the matter.

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

And, here is the clear separation from the Nihilistic turn of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist. Unlike the husband in that film, Michal is not meeting a mere symbol of angry female energy oppressed by centuries of human cruelty, Michal has fallen prey to a demonic sort of force. He is nothing more than a sort of life-force for the She-Shaman. He is one of those common saints. He has been deceived. His nothing more than brains for the She-Shaman‘s food.

As Stanislaw Przybyszewski might have appraised it, for this man survival is not an option. He must submit to the illusion and power of love. In a strange way, this intellectual is taking part in a consensual murder. In this odd bit of socially conscious cinema, everything is fucked.

God, Faith, Spirituality, and Hope looks down…
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Without love. Without hope. Szamanka must be satisfied.

Even to write about this true cinematic anomaly makes one feel a little loopy. By the time Andrzej Zulawski’s grim film comes to it’s conclusion the viewer is left spent and more than a little dazed.

The folks at Mondo Vision have done an outstanding job at restoring this deeply weird but exceptional film. Sadly, there are no plans to issue it to VOD or Blu-Ray format. It is only available from them on region free DVD. But they have loaded it with extras. If you’ve an interest in Eastern European cinema or the work of Andrzej Zulawski, you really can’t afford to miss it.

You can find it, and several of Zulawski’s titles here: http://www.mondo-vision.com/szamanka.php

Matty Stanfield, 9.15.2015

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

God, Faith, Spirituality, and Hope looks down…
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

When I hear or read “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!” I want to curl myself into a cataclysmic ball of rage and explode. No. The horrors and challenges in life that do not kill you do not really make you stronger. In reality they make you cynical, confused, damaged and tired. When discussing the survival of child abuse trauma we enter a whole new realm of fresh Hell.

Jean-Luc Godard
Editing “Weekend”
Paris, 1967
Photographer | Unknown to me

For me this saga continues. It isn’t like I’m not fighting like hell to resolve it. But as I’m so tired of hearing: “There is no time limit on these things.” or “Let’s just take it day by day and further develop coping skills” or worse yet, “But you are getting better!” But I push onward and forward as best I can. I don’t know, maybe I am stronger because of what I endured or survived. However, I can’t help but thing I’d be more effective had I not had to survive such things. I suspect I’d still be strong. Who knows? It is hardly worth considering. As much as I hate this phrase, it does hold true: “It is what it is.”

And sometimes we just don’t have the ability to change “it.” The “it” just sits on us as we try to understand exactly what “it” needs or wants so that we can be free of the weight. Damage is impossible to avoid. If you are 30 and have not been seriously damaged in one way or another – you are most likely not actually living life. You are probably avoiding it. Sadly, some damage is more significant than other types.

And this brings me to Film Art.

And chaos reigns. Surrealistically, Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg are working through some of life’s cruelest turns.
Antichrist
Lars von Trier, 2009
Cinematography | Anthony Dod Mantle

Much to the bewilderment of my love, my family and my friends — I often find “comfort” in the darkest of film. Steve McQueen’s Shame is especially important to me. As is Christophe Honre’s Ma Mere or Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream or Lars von Trier’s Anitichrist.

These are very bleak and almost apocalyptic movies. Yet, each one seems to offer me a chance to escape into someone else’s personal horrors and remind me that not only am I not alone — but it could be ever so much more worse. These films also offer resonation and catharsis.

Sugar-sweet brain candy cinematic manipulations tend to annoy me. I find no means of escape within them. If one is particularly good, such as Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein — if I’m in the right mood I will love watching it over and over again.

Persona
Ingmar Bergman, 1966
Cinematography | Sven Nykvist

But if one of those toxic waves crash into me I’d much prefer to watch Ingmar Bergman’s Persona or David Lynch’s Earaserhead. Another couple of films that provide me with escape is Luis Bunuel’s Belle de jour, Robert Altman’s 3 Women and Ki-duk Kim’s Pieta. As well as David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch, Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now or Godard’s Weekend. All of these movies project complex ideas and themes that require the mind to focus and think about what is being shown (or often not shown) — therefore, I find a way to temporarily escape my problems.

I jump into the problems and horrors examined in these dark films.

A serial killer roaming through the canals of Venice are the least worries facing Julie Christie as she and her husband face the despair, grief, isolation, guilt and tragedy of loss.
Don’t Look Now
Nicolas Roeg, 1973
Cinematography | Anthony B. Richmond

The resonation most likely comes from the one actual gift of survival: The ability to understand. While I do not suffer with Sex Addiction or an inability to connect beyond the sexual, I do feel an understanding and empathy for those who suffer with it. When life teaches one that his/her’s worth is tied to sexuality, it leaves that individual with every limited abilities to connect and encage. If ever mankind is haunted by demons, they are manifestations of Self-Loathing, Isolation and Loneliness. The two characters in Shame roam about a blue-toned Manhattan lost, unsure, impotent and desperate.

“We’re not bad people. We just come from a bad place.”
Michael Fassbender
Crushing under the weight of human damages
SHAME
Steve McQueen, 2011
Cinematography | Sean Bobbitt

Neither knows how to escape their respective prisons. The actors, Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan do not even need much dialogue. So strong are these talents, they can convey more with a glance, a gesture or most powerfully for Mulligan — in the singing of a song. Mulligan’s deconstruction of the standard, New York, New York, belongs on a pristine shelf of the perfect actor moment.

“If I can make it there…”
Carey Mulligan
SHAME
Steve McQueen, 2011
Cinematography | Sean Bobbitt

In her hands and voice, the infamous anthem becomes a defeatist glimpse into grief and regret.

In Ki-duk Kim’s dark and angry, Pieta, we are stolen into a world of injustice, cruelty, betrayal and vengeance. Min-so Jo plays “the mother” to Jung-jin Lee’s “son.” Both navigate with minimal use of words. Contrary to what one might expect from the often soap-opreaish work one normally sees these two actors in, here they are both given the freedom to fully explore the veins under the skins of their characters.

Ki-duk Kim’s film is a set-up for both the viewers and the two leading characters. There is nothing holy to be found in this Pieta. The catharsis of vengeance comes with a price that I can only believe is absolute truth. While one might fantasize of extracting vengeance, the reality is far removed from the pleasure we might expect.

Jung-jin Lee opens the door to the parent, Min-so Jo, who abandoned him with a knife at the ready…
Pieta
Ki-duk Kim, 2012
Cinematography | Young-jik Jo

Being a survivor, I often find myself imagining what I would do to my attacker if I could and how very happy it would make me. However, being a survivor has also taught me how to examine the tragedy from all sides.

There would be no happiness or pleasure in securing vengeance even if I could. My attacker has long since died. The bitter truth is that we humans are complicated animals. The reality is a child not only needs the love of his parent, he requires it. No matter how cruel a parent might be, there is something in us that needs to be able to love that person who gave us life. And while I have no children, I’m mature enough to know that a parent can feel great love for a child and still manage to deeply harm him/her.

It is a set-up. Despair, Grief & Anger turn to Vengeance.
Min-so Jo
Pieta
Ki-duk Kim, 2012
Cinematography | Young-jik Jo

The insanity that drives the parent to such acts in many ways has nothing to do with the love they might feel for the child. It is a tricky proposition to understand and requires a great deal of emotional logic to place this in the appropriate context, but often a victimizing parent is a victim themselves. The strange and very twisted truth is I know my father loved me. I know this to my core. I also know that he damaged me in ways beyond repair. Despite this, when he died I felt no relief. I only felt grief. A grief far deeper than I had ever felt before or since. So much unresolved and so much confusion. As the characters in Pieta secure their “need” for revenge — there is no turning back. They reduce themselves to the level of the victimizer. The “victory” comes at a price too strong to bear.

It is interesting and very telling that I seem to avoid films which tackle the subject of fathers raping, harming and emotionally abusing their sons. Perhaps this is too dark for even me. When I see a film addressing this it rings too close to my own horrors and confusions related to my late father. It is as if I need a bit of distance. These kind of conflicts involving a mother and a son are distanced enough from my life that I’m able to find something to gain.

Perhaps the most confusing film in which I find escape is Christophe Honre’s controversial and often banned film, Ma Mere.

“Wrong isn’t what we’re about to do. Wrong is wanting to survive it.”
Ma Mere
Christophe Honre, 2004
Cinematography | Hélène Louvart

Very loosely adapted from the infamous and posthumously published George Bataille novel which intended to shock as a way of both societal and cultural commentary — Christophe Honre had something a bit different in mind. Honre is very intellectual filmmaker. He is almost cliched French. He will stubbornly create a grim musical that refuses denial by a culture which seems to hold little value or appreciation of film musicals. He likes to force his hand. With the great Isabelle Huppert as his leading lady, Bataille’s novel is transferred to the modern day Canary Islands. We are expected to already know that this beautiful place has long succumbed itself to serve as both a tourist destination and a location for anything goes morality. Public sex, sex workers and fringe-dwellers litter the beaches and fill the after hours bar-hopping mall where the characters wonder about in the film’s first  act. Honre does not care to focus his attention to that.

“The pleasure only begins the moment the worm is in the fruit.”
Isabelle Huppert and Louis Garrel
Christophe Honre, 2004
Cinematography | Hélène Louvart

In the film version of Ma Mere, he seeks to tell the very complex, grim and perverse relationship of damaged mother to her damaged son. This is not a sexy movie, but it is very much about sexual experimentation, humiliation and a vexingly profane philosophy that the mother is hellbent on searing into the mind of her barely adult child. Louis Garrel has been raised by his strict Catholic grandmother — a family decision to “protect” him from his depraved parents who have long been exiled to The Canary Islands far from their families. We learn a great deal about the family history in the most casual of ways. Isabelle Huppert’s performance is a below the belt gut punch of realism over what must have appeared as absurd in script form.

Yet as Isabelle Huppert delivers a stream of profane and almost comical ideas, it is never funny. It feels real.

As Garrel’s “son” grapples with his own torn feelings about the loss of his Grandmother and her faith, he is also pulled toward this cruel version of a mother. While he may be technically adult, he is an innocent. He desperately craves the love and acceptance of his mother. He is unable to filter this need.

As she leads him into her confused and brutal world of psychological cruelty, BDSM and most certainly sadomasochistic rituals, the son becomes a sort of pawn with which his mother cannot decide to crush or love.

Victim turned Victimizer
Isabelle Huppert and “Friend”
Ma Mere
Christophe Honre, 2004
Cinematography | Hélène Louvart

We learn that her marriage to his father was born of statutory rape. Most likely he himself is the result of this rape. The film goes farther than it needs, but it is clear that the mother’s abuse is a conflicted result of anger, insanity and love.

As I watch these two almost surrealist characters perform their tragic dance, I do feel a worrying reality to it all. And of course this is the point of Ma Mere. We love our mothers. Our mothers love us. It does not mean they are not capable of inflicting cruelty beyond measure. The mother could just as easily be replaced with a father and a daughter for the son. But Mon Pere would be even more controversial and serve the idea of the film in an even more complex way.

Even his early childhood nanny can’t seem to stop the son from desperately seeking the love of his mother…
Dominique Reymond and Louis Garrel
Ma Mere
Christophe Honre, 2004
Cinematography | Hélène Louvart

Most importantly, Christophe Honre’s film never seeks to eroticize or celebrate the profane actions of its characters. It also  does not seek to judge them. It doesn’t need to. As Ma Mere grinds into its abrupt and deeply disturbing end, the tragic implications of human damage are clear. Worst yet, they seem to be on-going.

“Maybe now you know desire reduces us to weakness.”
Isabelle Huppert
Ma Mere
Christophe Honre, 2004
Cinematography | Hélène Louvart

While none of the above is my experience, I relate enough to feel the resonation of the art. It acts as a catharsis. I take a great deal of solace in knowing that I caught and understood what I “survived” soon enough to ensure that the abuse stops here with me. But in an all too clear way, what I survived has not made me stronger. The tragedy of what happened to me follows me constantly. And like the son in Christophe Honre’s tragically forgotten film, the implications seem on-going.

Matt Stanfield, 9.20.2015

An Adam Sandler

Videodrome
David Cronenberg, 1983

Marshall McLuhan was a fascinating intellectual. He was also a scholar and philosopher who focused nearly all of his attention to the ways in which media does a great deal more than inform, sell or entertain. Almost 30 years before it was created, McLuhan predicted the concept of a “global village” or and electronic means of communication. In other words, the Canadian Media Theory Philosopher predicted what we now call The Internet.

If you are unfamiliar with the ideas put forward by McLuhan, here are a few quotes that highlight his ideas about the impact of media:

“In this electronic age we see ourselves being translated more and more into the form of information, moving toward the technological extension of consciousness.” 

“Ideally, advertising aims at the goal of a programmed harmony among all human impulses and aspirations and endeavors. Using handicraft methods, it stretches out toward the ultimate electronic goal of a collective consciousness.”

Marshall McLuhan
circa 1970
Photographer | Unknown to me

“One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There’s always more than you can cope with.”

“Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication.”

“The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of ourselves – result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.”

McLuhan emerged as much a critic of media as he was in awe of a power that most could not see or simply seemed to to fully grasp. While “the medium is the message,” that message is continually elevating to newer and more invasive ways.

The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects
Marshall McLuhan, 1967 Graphic Design |Quentin Fiore

The continual evolution of medium’s technology is quickly escalating in it’s strength. Humankind is being manipulated in ways beyond the imagination. Individuality was / is losing ground. Is giving way to a formation of something more than “human” in the way we define ourselves.

“In this electronic age we see ourselves being translated more and more into the form of information, moving toward the technological extension of consciousness.” Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan’s ideas, theories, opinions and assertions are almost frightening in the ways one can chart the truth of what he stated in his lifetime. This great thinker died in 1980, yet his ideas remain alive and valid. To say he was ahead of the cultural curve would be an understatement.

As a Media Theorist, he had a great interest in television and motion pictures. Or, rather, an interest into what was actually being conveyed to audiences as they took in the information being “fed” into what was no longer simply the mind of the individual but the shared mind of those who watched and listened. By the mid-1970’s his ideas had well slipped into the intellectual mainstream as evidenced by his appearance as himself in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall in 1977.

In the surreal scene Allen’s character is able to invoke the presence of McLuhan to defend his personal opinion to an annoyingly loud fellow cinephile while they wait to see The Sorrow & The Pity:

“Wait a minute, why can’t I give my opinion? It’s a free country!”
“He can give it… do you have to give it so loud? I mean, aren’t you ashamed to pontificate like that? And the funny part of it is, Marshall McLuhan, you don’t know anything about Marshall McLuhan!”
“Oh, really? Well, it just so happens I teach a class at Columbia called ‘TV, Media and Culture.’ So I think my insights into Mr. McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity!”
“Oh, do ya? Well, that’s funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here, so, so, yeah, just let me —” [Allen pulls McLuhan into Gordon Willis’ frame] “Come over here for a second. tell him!”

“I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing!”
Marshall McLuhan stands up for Alvey
Annie Hall
Woody Allen, 1977
Cinematography | Gordon Willis

While more than a few artists latched onto the ideas of Marshall McLuhan so did Film Theory, Philosophy and Journalism majors at universities across the world. But perhaps no intellectual and no artist latched onto McLuhan’s theories than fellow Canadian filmmaker, David Cronenberg.

“Art is anything you can get away with.” — Marshall McLuhan

From the very beginning, David Cronenberg pushed the ideas of Grindhouse Horror further than any other. Certainly, George A. Romero was interested in the ideas around how marketing and consumerism were rendering humans to a zombie like need that could never be fully satisfied.

“What are they doing? Why do they come here?”
“Some kind of instinct. Memory of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.”
Zombies roam the mall for live flesh as the new commodity.
Day of the Dead
George A. Romero, 1978
Cinematography | Michael Gornick

But it was Cronenberg who began to translate McLuhan’s ideas into a literal horror involving not only the way in which we think, but the way in which medium-saturated psychology could possibly morph into our biology.

Cronenberg was also way ahead of the cultural curve, when his low-budget gore-fests like 1975’s Shivers and 1977’s Rabid use the idea of sexual appetite and parasites or viruses merging to spread world-wide pandemics. Shivers is focused on a swinging singles apartment complex, but Rabid branches out into the world. A strange sort of gaping slip of a hole appears in the armpit, and the diseased seeks out sex partners to satisfy a painful urge. …and spread a disease.

A perplexing gape of wound appears on the body beautiful. Iconic Porn Star of the day goes legit as the sexy victim of disease which causes her to aggressively spread her sickness…
RABID
David Cronenberg, 1977
Cinematography | René Verzier

As silly as the gore might be in this movies, both carry a cerebral and visceral horror for viewers that remain today. We might giggle at some of the effects, but once these movies end the realization that we have seen two movies that seem to have predicted AIDS is impossible to dismiss. It is of particular interest that Cronenberg sought out the former Ivory Soap Girl turned Porn Superstar, Marilyn Chambers, to play the main carrier of the disease. A once symbol of Purity, Cleanliness & Innocence turned to Hardcore Media Porn Star Sinsation. The medium is the message…

In what can probably be considered Cronenberg’s first truly artistic horror film, 1979’s The Brood offers horror on several levels. In some ways this movie is a horror film about child-like killers. The site of these murderous little demons is delivered in a low-fi but intensely horrifying way.

Brooding literally births avenging demonic child-like killers intent on carrying the medium and message
The Brood
David Cronenberg, 1979
Cinematography | Mark Irwin

On another level, this surprisingly cerebral film offers a horror film related to the clinging fears left over from the 1960’s/1970’s revolutionary changes regarding individual freedoms and a culture in which patriarchal “control” over sexuality, marriage, children and our own individual minds was giving way to something that many felt sinister.

Oliver Reed’s Dr. Hal Raglan is a brilliant and charismatic sort of Psychiatry Guru (or Psychoplasmics Master) who has established a center for emotionally challenged individuals. A wife and mother with serious emotional issues has sought help, but has become a sort of Cult Slave to Dr. Raglan’s mad science experiments involving psychological anger.

Samantha Eggar broods her rage into full-fledged living beings designed to carry out her darkest violent urges.
The Brood
David Cronenberg, 1979
Cinematography | Max Irwin

Played by Samantha Eggar, this woman has learned to channel her rage into her core biology. Dr. Raglan is the medium. The message is an endless rage which morphs into stunted results of psycho-physcial pregnancies. She is not merely brooding anger, resentment and anger at her husband and a daughter who has perhaps prevented her evolution as an individual. No, she is literally brooding a number of angry beings birthed to carry out her inner insane rages. Under the work of the Mad Scientist, she is birthing the medium that seeks to destroy.

“Thirty seconds after you’re born you have a past and sixty seconds after that you begin to lie to yourself about it.”
Grooming a birth of insane rage… Body Horror taken to a whole new level.
The Brood
David Cronenberg, 1979
Cinematography | Max Irwin

The Brood suffers from limited budget, hammy acting and an idea that feels at once brilliant and a bit too silly. But we cannot forget that this is a David Cronenberg. The Brood is more than a partially scary and partially satirical cult movie — it sneaks in under our skin and into our shared thinking. This film lingers long after the comedic elements fade. Esteemed writer, Carrie Rickey, has pointed out that The Brood is also a startling counter-point to Kramer Vs. Kramer.

In 1981’s Scanners, David Cronenberg officially crossed over to mainstream success. No longer limited to Drive-In’s, Midnight Screenings or lower-rate cinemas — Scanners received a wide release.

Disturbing but creative art therapy isn’t enough for corporate interests…
Scanners
David Cronenberg, 1979
Cinematography | Max Irwin

And it not only changed the way we think of Science Fiction Horror, it elevated Cronenberg to a whole new level of artistic acceptance. It can also be closely linked to the ideology of Marshall McLuhan. Although the message is presented to humanity more in the form of 20th Century biochemicals than media. In Cronenberg’s Scanners, Diethylstilbestrol (DES) is not merely a carcinogenic, it has infected fetuses with a new sort of power. Thalidomide not only harms, it too causes a strange psycho-power mutation within infected fetal tissue of mothers treated with these chemicals.

“How do you feel?”
“I feel crystal clear.”
Heads do not roll. They explode.
Scanners
David Cronenberg, 1979
Cinematography | Max Irwin

Suddenly, Cronenberg’s much discussed Body Horror has elevated from human emotion to true biological horror. These infected mothers have given birth to children who have a new horrific telekinesis power. A power that can ultimately be controlled and used as a new kind of weapon. The film is best known for the effect of exploding heads, is actually going much deeper into human fear and horror ideology.

But it would be with Cronenberg’s 1983’s Videodrome that his interests in McLuhan’s teachings and the director’s own personal interest in the horror of the body turning against it’s owner would blend to form the almost perfect mix of Art Horror, Science Fiction, Surrealism and Cultural/Societal commentary.

“First it controls your mind…then it destroys your body”
France’s marketing campaign focused heavily on Debbie Harry
Videodrome
David Cronenberg, 1983
Cinematography | Max Irwin

Max Renn is the burned-out, bored but still ambitious CEO of a small Adults-Only cable company that seems posed to break big in the growing world of cable TV. Renn markets his cable channel as “The one you take to bed with you.” In 1983, audiences would have linked this fictional channel to the likes of Playboy TV or a wide range of latenight-only cable channels that offered soft porn and other provocative topics to it’s viewers.

Just slightly ahead of the game, the VHS industry was really only just starting to take-off across the mainstream. Players were only just starting to come down in price and the middle class had only dipped a few toes into the video-stream. The battle between VHS and BetaMax had not even fully started.

Cyber-Punk Surrealism or Infected Brain Hallucination? James Wood’s is about to receive a whole new kind of “head”
Videodrome
David Cronenberg, 1983
Cinematography | Max Irwin

In the real world, these types of channels were facing a number of obstacles in presenting hardcore sex. It was limited to silly soft-porn movies or carefully edited hardcore sex movies to amped-up R-rated erotica. In Cronenberg’s film Max Renn is eager to push pass the rules. Seemingly latching onto McLuhan’s idea of art being what one can get away with, Renn no longer cares about the rules that restrict him from gaining a competitive edge in the erotic marketplace. His “ethical” stance is flawed. If compared to McLuhan’s concept, Renn has perverted the idea regarding art. For Renn, this is simply business.

Enter the oddly moralistic world of David Cronenberg. Sexuality is a lure that Cronenberg utilizes to pull the audience into his latest exploration in psychological horror. The use of sex is both titillating and perverse. In many ways, Videodrome is  Cyber-Punk Horror that dares to call our erotic desires into both cinematic provocation as well as an almost moral judgement.

Cinematic Provocation. A strange group of people can only find sexual pleasure/release at the time of self-inflicted car collisions take place. The scars become more erotic than the body upon which they inflict.
Rosanna Arquette
CRASH
David Cronenberg, 1996
Cinematography | Peter Suschitzky

I stress almost because Cronenberg is expertly exploiting/selling sex as much as he thrusts our prurient interests to a questionable level. This was not the first time nor was it the last that this skilled filmmaker would use sexuality in a perplexing duality of human nature. There is always a strangely moralistic tie in all of Cronenberg’s films. Even in his adaptation of JG Ballard’s CRASH, he would tease the audience with subversive and perverse sexuality to arouse not only very dark eroticism, but to illicit a perverse joy in turning it back on the audience.

One of our first opportunities to understand this character is when we see him as a guest on a local channel chat show. The chat show host is clearly uncomfortable discussing the ever-expanding level of sexual explicitness on television, but she grins and bares it. Max is one of three guests. The second guest is Nicki Brand, played with a gleeful level of subversion by Cultural Icon, Debbie Harry. Nicki, like Max, sells sex. She is selling herself as a sort of Post-Feminist erotic answer to the “outmoded” concepts of Feminist Theory formed by Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. Her mode of medium is talk radio in which she dishes out pseudo-pop-psychology sexualized advice.

“What about it, Nicki? Is it socially positive?”
“Well, I think we live in overstimulated times. We crave stimulation for its own sake. We gorge ourselves on it. We always want more, whether it’s tactile, emotional or sexual.”
Feminist Theory gets a kink-reboot with Debbie Harry as Nicki Brand.
Videodrome
David Cronenberg, 1983
Cinematography | Max Irwin

Debbie Harry, at her own erotic prime and fame is the perfect actor for this role. At once intellectual and also a rather edgy erotic tease, she is like cat-nip for Max Renn. As the chat show host pulls them into a debate about the dark side of eroticism to the masses, it becomes clear that Nicki Brand isn’t really looking to counter-point Max Renn as much as to simply admit that she is fully aware of the “dangers” but not that concerned with falling prey. As she informs the host, “We live in over-stimulated times.” As Max begins to openly flirt with Nicki, the host is left in an even more comical unease.

She then turns away from her two sex-fueled guest to her scientific expert who refuses to appear on any other media than the television. Taken to a truly literal perspective, Professor Brian O’Blivion appears on a TV sitting on a coffee table by the host. As the increasingly nervous host attempts to interview O’Blivion it quickly becomes apparent that he is not going to fully connect with her.

Marshall McLuhan deconstructed: Dr. Brian O’Blivion only seems to respond…
Videodrome
David Cronenberg, 1983
Cinematography | Max Irwin

He seems to be watching her other two guests, but moves into a sort of intellectual rant about the powers of television media: He begins to offer an almost religious sort of speech that television will soon replace “our” reality. Completely ignoring his host, he begins to almost preach through the screen of his own TV image:

“The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena: the Videodrome. The television screen is the retina of the mind’s eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television. The television screen is the retina of the mind’s eye.”

David Cronenberg was very clear that his created character of Dr. Brian O’Blivion is based soley on Marshall McLuhan and the esteemed Media Sociologist’s ideas. McLuhan’s teachings, ideas and concepts are all brought to the forefront of this highly entertaining and often disturbing film. While Cronenberg lays it all out in literal and visceral visual terms, nothing actually strays too far from the recently departed McLuhan.

James Woods’ Max Renn develops an odd itchy rash as he watches…
Videodrome
David Cronenberg, 1983
Cinematography | Max Irwin

Played with simultaneous sexy swagger and icky slimed confidence by James Woods, Max deals with the European Erotica Market as well as underground networks of slightly harder-edged porn from Asia. We catch glimpses of the new work he is considering for his channel. From his European connection, the work seems innocently decadent. From the seemingly illegal importation from Asia, the work seems to be a sexualization of ethnic stereotypes that are pushing toward sadistic erotic pleasures. For Max, these new erotica films might offer a bit more in the way of erotic explicitness and controversy — but they are not enough. He is looking for something more “dangerous” and “risky.”

Enter Max’s pal and tech wiz, who manages to catch a Malaysian signal of what appears to be very realistic torture porn. So realistic in presentation, there is a suspicion that what Max is seeing may be a true filming of snuff human cruelty. It is never fully clear to us if Max is fully “OK” with what he sees on a show that seems to be called Videodrome, but it is clear that the sadomasochistic is most definitely turning him on.

In 1983, it was shocking when Debbie Harry is suggested to supply a little bit of BDSM to get Max’s changing body stimulated. In 2015, this medium of BDSM has already become passively engrained within the cultural mind.
Videodrome
David Cronenberg, 1983
Cinematography | Max Irwin

He pushes his tech engineer to find the true origin of the Videodrome signal which turns out to be coming from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Comforting himself by insisting that what he is seeing is a “pretend” electrically-charged clay wall and orange/red floors upon and against which acts of brutal sexual assaults and murders are carried out in realistic but fake ways. Max essentially threatens his libidinous European contact to find the creators of Videodrome to help him secure a deal to air their show. Soon later, his contact tries to soft talk him out of the idea. She advises that what he has been seeing is more than erotic entertainment.

She leans in as informs him that Videodrome has a philosophy. Videodrome is real. 

At first Max refuses to believe it. His sexual relationship with Nicki is one linked to pain and punishment. It is all-the-more-hightened by a viewing of Videodrome. In a clever bit of Surrealism, Max and Nicki’s sexual blood-letting morphs out of Max’s condo and onto the wet red floor of the Videodrome set. Hallucinations give way to very real altercations in which Max’s body seems to be changing to fit into the psychology of Videodrome.

“Open up, Max. We have a tape we have a tape we need to play…”
Videodrome
David Cronenberg, 1983
Cinematography | Max Irwin

In one of the film’s many mind-bending special effects, Max begins to develop an itch resulting from what appears at first to be a an enflamed vertical line traveling down his “happy trail” that quickly emerges into a yon-like flesh entry point. Wet and wanting to be fed, this vaginal sort of “wound” becomes a portal in which Max and insidious Bad Guys place guns and breathing-infected videotapes. The pain of this “fleshy slit” also seems to deliver a source of uncomfortable pleasure. Eventually this body morphing develops teeth.

David Cronenberg’s Videodrome is a repulsive, intense and surreal Art Horror masterpiece that must be experienced to fully understand and enjoy. With each scene, the Videodrome transmissions seem to infect Max’s psychology, perception and ultimately his body.

A new point of entry to Max Renn… Body Horror taken to a whole new level.
Videodrome
David Cronenberg, 1983
Cinematography | Max Irwin

The ultimate body horror show, Max must either destroy the evil that is Videodrome and accept the new flesh it has created and take it forward to the next logical step. Many viewers interpret the film in different ways — particularly it’s apocalyptic ending. But it seems to me that David Cronenberg is pushing Marshall McLuhan’s ideology in very literal way. Fully infected by media’s disease, Max must refuse to submit to a vile corporate plan. He must take back what the medium has communicated into his very being.

“Death to Videodrome! Long live the new flesh!”

The Medium turns against you…
Videodrome
David Cronenberg, 1983
Cinematography | Max Irwin

David Cronenberg has not only gotten away with creating a powerful and lasting work of film art, his horror film navigates the audience into a whole different sort of human universe. Video/Analog may have given way to HD/Digital, but the message of the medium is still every bit as worrying to us in 2015 as it was in 1983. The power of media is inescapable now more than ever. Paranoia and the threat of disease is at all time high.

Vidoedrome is far more than a Cult Horror Film Classic, it is a very warped, twisted and disturbing cinematic philosophy not to be be forgotten.

“Death to Videodrome. Long live the New Flesh.” Now, come to Nicki…
Debbie Harry
Videodrome
David Cronenberg, 1983
Cinematography | Max Irwin

Matty Stanfield, 9.28.15

Like being strapped into an amusement park ride, sitting in the darkness as a horror movie begins there is a mixture of giddy fun and an often embarrassing dread of what we are submitting ourselves to — will it be a fun rush of the senses or a stomach churning sort of emotional litmus test?

Is that a closet? Why was it blocked?
Rosemary’s Baby Roman Polanski, 1968 Cinematography | William A. Fraker

Does the rollercoaster that tilts and sends on a loop turing us upside down at a high speed offer more fun than one limited to fast turns with slow accents followed by forced down hill trajectory offer more satisfaction?

The answer is subjective. There is no right or wrong.

But what is it about some horror films that not only frighten us, but linger long after the house lights come back up? Most horror films offer a quick intensity that leaves us fairly quickly. Sometimes, however, a horror film comes along that offers something a bit more jolting. The kind of jolt that leaves us entertained, afraid, shocked and unsettled. This is the sort of jolt that comes back to haunt us as we try to fall asleep or walk down a dark corridor.

“I don’t like them there.”
Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

In 1965 Roman Polanski delivered a new sort of horror film. Repulsion shocked audiences upon initial release. It still upsets many. Why? Catherine Deneuve plays Carol. A beautiful but seemingly perpetual daydreamer who discovers that she is to be left all alone in the large apartment she shares with her older sister. What happens to Carol and those who venture into this apartment while the sister is out on a brief holiday is more than unexpected, it is lethal. Carol is not a daydreamer, she is clearly suffering with some sort of emotional problem. Is this an issue related to some form of sexual trauma? Is this mental illness? Is this some form of depressive exhaustion? What is wrong with Carol? 

Carol contemplates the dangers of the washroom as perspective continues to warp…
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

Repulsion wastes no time in establishing something clearly: the camera’s perspective is simply off. We are following Carol through her mundane life as a beautician, then walking through the streets of London and finally at the apartment she shares with her sister. Roman Polanski and Cinematographer, Gilbert Taylor, carefully set each shot from strange angles. As the film progresses, the camera’s perceptions become more odd. We are seeing reality through Carol’s perception of it. As Deneuve’s character slips into reality filled with threat and menace, we are not entirely sure if what we are seeing can be trusted.

Catherine Deneuve in a moment of iconic cinema…
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

Surely those are not arms slipping out of the walls to grab and molest Carol. Right? Or have we just entered some twisted sort of paranormal horror? Before long the audience comes to understand that we are witnessing a psychotic break. A break that slips so far into the darkest corner of human psyche that no one is safe. Repulsion stays with the viewer.

But the threat filled menace of human perception would take on a far more ambiguous stance in Polanski’s 1968 horror masterpiece, Rosemary’s Baby.

“Pray for Rosemary’s Baby.”
Rosemary’s Baby
Roman Polanski, 1968
Cinematography | William A. Fraker

At first glance or after an audiences’ first viewing, this would appear to be a full-on exorcise in Satanic horror at it’s most dire. An innocent woman has been set up to procreate with The Devil and deliver The Anti-Christ. As Rosemary’s life in her new home begins she is faced with a creepy basement laundry room, the death of a new friend and an uncomfortable forced friendship with nosey and eccentric neighbors.

Polanski and Cinematographer, William A. Fraker, begin to establish an interesting camera perspective almost as soon as Rosemary and her husband move into their new apartment. The use of cinematography is not immediately noticeable, but it is there from the beginning.

A gift or a curse?
Mia Farrow
Rosemary’s Baby
Roman Polanski, 1968
Cinematography | William A. Fraker

Halls and doorways take on a suspicious and curious perspective. As Rosemary’s paranoia and fears begin to mount, the audience becomes pulled into a literal sort of maze of unanswered perspective. The first of Fraker’s shots that really grabs our attention is the use of Rosemary’s front door peephole. Ruth Gordon’s Minnie Castevet is truly iconic movie character. At first comical, then slightly annoying — and slowly she shifts to something altogether horrifying. When Rosemary looks out her peephole, we gain a distorted perception of Minnie that is warped and unsettling. She no longer looks like the kooky old bat next door. She looks suspicious and vaguely reminiscent of a clown. Not the kind of clown at whom you might laugh, the sort that would make you pull your child back and avoid at all costs.

Rosemary and the audience get a whole new perspective on the eccentric woman next door. Ruth Gordon Rosemary’s Baby Roman Polanski, 1968 Cinematography | William A. Fraker

A building suicide, nosy people and a dear friend’s creepy stories related to the old building which contains her new apartment — Rosemary is understandably more than a little shaken. But after the wacky Minnie creates two cups of chocolate “mouse” for Rosemary and her husband, she finds the taste feature an unpleasant aftertaste. Her husband almost becomes angry that she doesn’t want to eat it. She only eats a bit. Soon she is feeling drugged. Once again slightly tilting the perspective, Rosemary passes out.

Blame it on Minnie’s “chocolate mouse” or is it a symptom of something else?
Rosemary’s Baby
Roman Polanski, 1968
Cinematography | William A. Fraker

We are then brought into Rosemary’s dreams. We have already been here briefly before when she dreams of a childhood incident with a Catholic Nun yet hears the annoying banter of her odd neighbors, Minnie and Roman. Their voices take the place of the Nun’s. But this time Rosemary’s dream is far more articulated and disturbing. She dreams of a sort of sexual ritual wherein all of the old neighbors of her building are standing around her bed.

“Perhaps you’d better have your legs tied down in case of convulsions.”
Rosemary’s Baby
Roman Polanski, 1968
Cinematography | William A. Fraker

They are nude. Suddenly a demonic animal is running it’s claws across her body. Rosemary is in dream state. She observes and follows instructions without objection. But suddenly, she is alarmed and seems to have awoken.

“This is no dream! This is really happening!”

But then she does wakes up and it is the next morning. She is nude and she has long scratches across her back. She quickly realizes that her husband has ravished her in what is an inappropriate sexual encounter. Filmed in 1967, while her character feels her husband has raped her, she pushes this feeling down. But we can tell Rosemary almost hopes it was all just a bad dream rather than face the fact that her husband had her while she was passed out ill. Alas, this is not an option for Rosemary. Her husband has violated her. Trauma much?

A sluggish Rosemary says, “I dreamed someone was raping me. I think it was someone inhuman.”
And her husband responds, “Thanks a lot.”
Mia Farrow
Rosemary’s Baby
Roman Polanski, 1968
Cinematography | William A. Fraker

William A. Fraker’s masterful camerawork continues to pull us back. Perceptions are never quite right again. in one of the cinema’s best shot scenes, Ruth Gordon’s Minnie rushes to Rosemary’s bedroom to phone Manhattan’s top Obstetricians. From a filmmaking perspective, this entire scene is one elegant and fascinating manipulation of the medium. Faker’s camera only allows us to see a bit of Minnie as she makes this call. I dare a viewer of this film on a big screen to successfully fight the urge to tilt his/her head to see what is going on in Rosemary’s bedroom.

Minnie makes a phone call and we all try to see what’s really going on as she speaks into the phone…
Rosemary’s Baby
Roman Polanski, 1968
Cinematography | William A. Fraker

Masterful and perplexing: we are now officially and fully immersed in Rosemary’s paranoia.

The truly magical aspect that has helped Rosemary’s Baby to not only remain valid but alarmingly disturbing is the fact that perception of reality is so skewed that we are never fully certain that Rosemary’s paranoia is valid. Upon the first viewing of Polanski’s film, one is likely to walk away with a bit of a chuckle that Rosemary was quite right: She has given birth to The Anti-Christ. All we saw was true.

All of them were witches united to trick Rosemary into being fucked by Satan. 

The true reality solved by Scrabble?
Rosemary’s Baby
Roman Polanski, 1968
Cinematography | William A. Fraker

If one watches Rosemary’s Baby again, and watches it a bit closer — something odd emerges.

This creeping idea is one of the reasons this film is a true cinematic masterpiece that refuses to go away from our subconscious. At no point in this horror film is the validity of Rosemary’s paranoia and fear fully confirmed. As the movie pulls us into the final act of the story, the question of whether or not what we are seeing is “correct” or “real” is brought into question. This could all be a fever dream of exhausted and terrified human psyche. Rosemary’s world has been rocked enough to understand how her perceptions of reality might be pushed into subversion.

Adrift in mental and emotional confusion.
Rosemary’s Baby
Roman Polanski, 1968
Cinematography | William A. Fraker

Her husband has essentially raped her while sick, this results in a pregnancy. Hormones surging and her choices and opinions constantly challenged — she soon finds herself in a great deal of pain. Everything in Rosemary’s reality has derailed. Death and darkness seem to envelope her. Her husband is distracted by new career opportunities and possibly some guilt. Whatever the cause he is distant.

Rosemary feels trapped. She must escape. She runs away to her original first choice Obstetrician. A very pregnant woman carrying a heavy suitcase on a record-setting hot Manhattan day arrives to this younger and far more modern doctor’s office. She insists he “save” her and her baby. She spouts a rant about Satanic witches and elaborate plans to harm both her and her baby. She pulls out an old book on the supernatural. The doctor calms her down. She finally relaxes and her official Minnie-hired Obstetrician arrives with her frustrated husband to take her home.

But, she did seem to slip into a dream prior to the “betrayal” of the young doctor.

As we enter the final act of the movie, how reliable is Rosemary’s perception? Every single thing is from her perspective?

Is Rosemary’s reality real? Is this a perspective we can believe and trust? 

Rosemary alone with pain, loss, hurt, rape and her thoughts…
Mia Farrow in that doorway
Rosemary’s Baby
Roman Polanski, 1968
Cinematography | William A. Fraker

There is no clear answer to be found in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. We will never know for sure if she has delivered The Anti-Christ “To 1966! The year One.”

This level of unresolved tension doesn’t even need to fully register for the viewer to pick-up on it at some level. The truth of what we see is questionable. Rosemary’s perception (as well as our own) has been altered and put into a state of limited and distorted vision.

What is scarier? The reveal that human fear and paranoia is fully validated or the understanding that we are simply unsure. The fear and paranoia remain unresolved.

Reality or Delusion?
Mia Farrow looking into Hell
Rosemary’s Baby
Roman Polanski, 1968
Cinematography | William A. Fraker

For years I used to debate this opinion with friends. Everyone seemed split down the middle. Some felt I, myself, was reading too much into the movie. Others agreed.

Finally I was validated when Roman Polanski himself stated that his goal was to present a depiction of human perception skewed to leave the audience wondering if Rosemary was seeing the “truth” or imagining some grand conspiracy.

Warning: TO AVOID ANY SPOILERS RE: TO THE FILM, LYLE, DO NOT READ FURTHER.

Which brings me to Stewart Thorndike’s 2014 but newly-released film, Lyle. As much a tribute to Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby as it is a low-fi re-working of the same sort of diabolical idea, Thorndike and her Cinematographer, Grant Greenberg, have created an intense psychological horror film. Or so we might think…

Gaby Hoffmann
LYLE
Stewart Thorndike, 2014
Cinematography | Grant Greenberg

Greenberg’s camerawork is simple, yet carefully articulated. Like William A. Franker, he has paid close attention to perception. Doorways, large open-spaces, halls and angles are all designed to make us look closely. Visual information is provided in a suspect manner. More than a few times in this tightly-edited film, we want to see beyond the boundaries established by Greenberg.

Also of great credit to both he and the film’s director/writer, Stewart Thorndike, Lyle features the best use of a Skype-like call I have ever seen. Limiting the audience view to the shared computers’ perceptions is a brilliant device.

Leah and Lyle are left alone to unpack and fill their day…
LYLE
Stewart Thorndike, 2014
Cinematography | Grant Greenberg

As any sensible film-buff would expect, Gaby Hoffmann is brilliant in the film’s leading role. As the mother, Leah, Hoffmann delivers a perfectly nuanced and powerful turn toward hope, grief, fear, paranoia, panic, sheer horror, desperation and ultimately rage. Unlike Mia Farrow’s passive Rosemary, there is nothing oppressed about Gabby Hoffman’s Leah. A devoted wife and mother, she fully embraces her role in the family. She also places correct value to her identity and worth.

Yet she senses something “removed” or “distant” regarding her wife. Played by Ingrid Jungermann, June is appears to be the family provider. One gets the feeling that June is either ambivalent about parenting or is deeply upset that the newly pregnant Leah is carrying a girl child. June was clearly hoping for a little boy, but her frustration is both uncomfortable and suspicious.

Gaby Hoffmann
LYLE
Stewart Thorndike, 2014
Cinematography | Grant Greenberg

Moving into a swank new Brooklyn apartment, Leah loves their new home. She does not love the new landlord. Rebecca Street is the only other actor in this film who can rival Hoffmann’s skills. Street is cast in a role that is somewhat similar to Ruth Gordon’s Minnie. Excepting that Street’s Karen is quite a bit younger. Younger, but not young. Leah is immediately concerned to discover that her landlady who she suspects is entering her 60’s claims to be trying to get pregnant. In fact, before long Leah (and the audience) catch limited glimpses of Karen pregnant and then not but expressing milk through her top.

Like Rosemary, Leah is constantly having to re-evaluate her perception of reality. After suffering the loss of her firstborn child, she is aware that the loss of Lyle has caused an understandably confused and disoriented emotional chain of reactions. As the circumstances around Lyle’s accidental death grow more suspicious to her and as she discovers increasingly worrying information about her home and the people who live in and near it — Leah becomes more than a little paranoid. To Stewart Thorndike’s credit, this film packs a great deal of suspense and tension.

“Help me!”
Gaby Hoffmann
LYLE
Stewart Thorndike, 2014
Cinematography | Grant Greenberg

Running just a little over an hour in length, Lyle does not let the audience down. The film is encaging, disturbing, creepy and solidly entertaining. The only issue I noted with this sinister little movie is the director’s decision to fully resolve the paranoia and fears of the lead character. At the moment we discover the validity of the mother’s fears and the fact that she has not been paranoid, the horror of Lyle becomes mutedly blunt. All answers are resolved and Leah is left to do what she must in an attempt to save her child. While Lyle is a potent little film, it loses his grip by giving us too much.

To what point has Grant Greenberg’s cinematography served? Do we feel relieved or all the more dire that Leah’s darkest fears turn out to be true? Lyle leaves the audience with an uncertain future for Leah, but there is no articulated logic to the dark pact with Evil for career success. It isn’t clear.

The aspects of the paranoia that are not fully revealed or explained leave a sort of emotional hole where a cinematic “pay-off” should have been. The intention is unclear, but not the human perspective. In what felt like the shaping of horror reveals itself to be more aligned with a taught thriller minus logic.

Gaby Hoffmann
LYLE
Stewart Thorndike, 2014
Cinematography | Grant Greenberg

Unlike Polanski and Frakers’ manipulation of paranoia and character perspective, Lyle has teased the audience. And the emotional result is one of frustration. Lyle is not likely to scare the audience. Instead it plunges us further into darkness without any room for ambiguity. Stewart Thorndike is a flimmaker with a a strong future ahead of her. She has a great deal of skill in telling her story. But the question for me remains, is it more effective to bring a story of paranoia and human fear to fully articulated explanation or better to limit the audiences’ ability to fully know? From my perspective, Lyle gives an unsatisfying ending.

David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows is an example of a horror film that leaves the audience unsure. Alex R. Johnson’s Two Step fits more toward Thorndike’s Lyle. However, Alex R. Johnson’s film is not intended as a horror film as much as a modulated thriller that escalates far beyond audience anticipation. Within that mode of operation, a fully resolved ending makes sense.

Perhaps the best example of current cinema that illustrates the idea of ambiguity is Alex Ross Perry’s polarizing examination of identity and insanity, Queen of Earth.

Where does reality end and insanity begin? Welcome to Surrealism…
Katherine Waterston & Elisabeth Moss
Queen of Earth
Alex Ross Perry, 2015
Cinematography | Sean Price Williams

While this film may not be a straight-up horror film, it does depict the most horrific aspect of being human: Insanity. The idea of not knowing when what is perceived is “reality” or “delusion” is oddly effective. Much like Mia Farrow’s Rosemary, Elisabeth Moss and Katherine Waterston will be forever stuck in a sort of nightmarish mire of rage, distrust and warped perspective.

We do not have all the pieces of their puzzles.

It fascinates.

It pulls us further into the ideas of the films.

Most of all, these stories of human frailty, fear and possibly insanity stick with us. The ambivalence sears into our shared subconscious. 

Mia Farrow
Rosemary’s Baby
Roman Polanski, 1968
Cinematography | William A. Fraker

Life is a mystery and is forever full of “WTF” moments. It is in those moments where we are least sure and are forced to go into “full alert” that the uncertainty of our realities become the most worrying.

In a strange way, Roman Polanski’s Art Horror remind us of life.

At the ready to attack, but still unsure…
Mia Farrow
Rosemary’s Baby
Roman Polanski, 1968
Cinematography | William A. Fraker

They jolt us into the present of our mind. And we are forever a bit unsure.

Matty Stanfield, 10.1.15

“I was wondering if you could do me a favor and write a think piece on Polanski’s Repulsion? Perhaps you could post it on your blog. I’d really appreciate it.”

“The nightmare world of a virgin’s dreams becomes the screen’s shocking reality!”
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965

This request brought me back to my college daze. An English Major, during my sophomore year a professor challenged me to form my semester thesis on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter. The challenge was not the thesis, but the actual assignment:

Create a thesis “with something new” to offer about the Scarlet Letter.

An odd and somewhat cruel way to make or break my grade. I wanted to bang my then-stoner-head into a wall. I took a real leap into my deconstruction of Hawthorne’s novel. And, I pulled out all the stops.

On her way up to the flat she shares with her sister, Carol bites her nails. I was doing something similar as I tried to find something “new” in “The Scarlet Letter”
Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

My thesis argued that the book was an account of actual demonic possession. As I made my presentation to a class full of actual adults, I was met with snickering and eye-rolling. However, I had strange supporting information for every question designed to make me look the idiot. In the end, the professor gave me a “B.”

Not a horrible grade, but this was an advanced course in which I was the only student not yet working on their Masters. It was the lowest grade I ever received in a literature course. A year later I asked this professor why he gave me such a task. His answer? The conversation went something like this:

“I wanted to take you down a peg or two. I didn’t feel a Sophomore should have been in that class.”

“So you wanted to humiliate me by having me read a book normally studied in Freshman year?”

“Yes and I wanted to give you an impossible assignment. I had no intention of failing you. My plan was to give you a “C” no matter what you presented.”

“You gave me a ‘B.‘”

“Yes. Your thesis was absurd, but you supported it well. I almost gave you an ‘A-‘ but your ridiculous rebellion against grammar would not allow me that opportunity.”

The following semester I discussed this with another professor who would become my university mentor and friend until her death in the mid-1990’s. She indicated that my experience was actually a surprising compliment from that professor.

So when an individual of some note asked me to write a piece about Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, I had to laugh. What can one possibly write about that infamous film that hasn’t been written about six million times before? I thought about it and politely declined. But as it turns out there is a strangely valid reason for this person’s request.

And so I now ask for your indulgence as I attempt to take another exploration into Repulsion.

Catching her reflection in a vase, Carol seems transfixed by the contour’s warped perspective.
Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

It speaks volumes that 50 years after it first screened, Repulsion continues to not only entertain, but unnerve audiences. Roman Polanski’s first English-speaking film is at simultaneously experimental and resoundingly accessible. It also happens to be one of the most intimately disturbing films ever made. The intimacy of this film emanates not only from the style in which it is crafted but also from a universally shared fear of losing grasp with our own perception of reality. The film gradually pulls us into the protagonist’s hysteria leaving the viewer disoriented and distressed. I do not care for the term “hysteria” but I think it is perfectly suited here. By the time Polanski’s grim little movie comes to its ambiguous ending and circular cinematic “logic,” it is impossible to not relate to Catherine Deneuve’s character.

This resonation is the film’s most horrific element: deep down we all worry that sanity is just a few pegs away from leaving us alone, isolated and afraid beyond recognition.

Roman Polanski has always refused to answer direct questions about what we are seeing or how we are to interpret what is shown. While this is a smart move for any filmmaker, I suspect Polanski’s refusal is actually deeply valid. Certainly the movie is about a young woman going insane, but questions about “reality” vs. “hallucination” or simply “Surrealism” continue to form Repulsion‘s Film Theory discussion. However, the idea that Polanski himself was not entirely sure of what he was striving to present fails to hold water. Roman Polanski is far too intelligent a filmmaker and Repulsion is far too acutely acted, set-up and edited to have come from an unsure footing.

Moving closer is the vase’s distortion somehow more aligned with Carol’s perceptions?
Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

I’ve read so many essays on this film. I would not know how to reference all of the different theories. These range from “Feminist Statement” to “It all really happens!” to “Childhood Rape Survivor / PTSD” all the way down to Cinematic Metaphor on a wide range of topics. One of the many metaphors tied to the film is the Counter-Cultural Impact of the 1960’s. Another ties the film to Sexual Revolutionary Reaction. Going even further beneath the surface of the film’s simple complexity have been theories about the actual meaning of the protagonist’s name. I must admit that even the most far-out theories interest me. The way we deconstruct artwork is always interesting and revealing.

Perhaps the most valid of the many theories is grounded in three Polanski films that are often referred to as The Apartment Horror Trilogy. One would have a hard time arguing against the connections between Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby and The Tenant. All three of these films play with senses of perception, claustrophobic induced fears, paranoia and insanity. Then of course there is the knee-jerk tendency to connect Polanski’s profoundly horrific childhood, the devastating tragedy he endured in the late 1960’s and his personal sexual transgressions of the 1970’s which led him into exile. Certainly an artist’s life experience will color his/her work, but unless the artist is willing to discuss the connection — it really feels inappropriate to read the personal into the work. And yet can we just dismiss the facts that two of the characters are immigrants, deal with sexual confusion, are put in the position of outsiders and all fall prey to paranoia.

But my personal concept of this strangely timeless film is tied to perception. A deeply warped and disassociated perception that has been manifesting within the mind that when faced dead-on with confrontation, loneliness and isolation triggers a spasm into the darkest corners of insanity. The most telling signals Polanski delivers, with a great deal of assistance from Gilbert Taylor’s cinematography, are the ways in which he starts and ends the film. The first thing we see on the screen is Carol’s eye in extreme close-up. As the camera pulls back we realize that we are seeing Deneuve’s “Carol” staring out into space. She is clearly not looking at anything, yet there is something “off” about her expression. It hints that she might be looking at something which is not visible to us. In reality, she has sort of spaced-out during application of a manicure in the beauty salon that employees her.

The opening shot…
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

Her client, her co-worker and her boss all seem to think she is caught in the dewy haze of love. The pretty manicurist is daydreaming of her Prince Charming. If only they knew. Carol is an immigrant and she lives with her sister, Helene, in a fairly spacious and charming apartment. It is important to note that Carol’s apartment is simple and it appears spacious. However, after we enter the apartment with Carol it is clear that it is not all that large. Upon entering this home which will soon morph into a sort of self-imposed prison of horrors, we note that the entry way is short. The living room is off to the immediate left, the kitchen off to the immediate right. The hallway leads to the modern bathroom. The bedrooms appear at first to be opposite each other at the end of the hall.

Carol’s “safe place” quickly transforms into a living, breathing, shape-shifting space of horrors.
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

It is also interesting to note that the apartment is appointed with furniture that would have most likely been accumulated from various sources. Only Carol’s elder sister seems to have taken the time to actually fashion a look for her bedroom. Both young women still have remnants of childhood in their respective rooms. However, there is an important difference between Carol and Helenes’ rooms: Helen has a couple of stuffed animals, but a sexy feminine atmosphere. Carol’s room is oddly void of personality. Yet there a few things of note: a child’s night lamp and a sense of untidiness. The living room has a cluttered collection of items which we can safely assume have all been placed by Helene. Life, Marie-Claire and gossip magazines lay near a simple turntable/radio with some 45’s and a couple of record albums. Judging by the way we will later see Carol rummage through the items in the living room — none of these things are hers and none seem to interest her. Except for one item.

It is Polanski’s repeated return to this item that it is clear that is great meaning here. An old childhood family photograph which we will later learn was taken in Brussels. This photograph seems draw Carol’s attention. She clearly wants to look it, but it seems to hold a threat within the borders of the frame.

A childhood family portrait taken in Brussels…
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

Early in the film Helene points out that Carol needs to be more social. She needs to get out more and meet people. As Helene begins to prepare a meal with a freshly skinned rabbit as the core component, Carol seems to only be interested in two things: Helene’s boyfriend who has begun to leave his personal items in Carol’s bathroom glass and a crack springing out from what appears to be some sort of kitchen ventilation screen. Helene has little patience for Carol’s dislike of her boyfriend. An impatience which we later will understand comes from the fact that Helene is dating a married man.

When Carol studies the crack in the kitchen wall she mutters, “I must get this crack mended.” Helene only briefly appears to be concerned by the comment. It is only with hindsight that the viewer wonders if that initial crack was ever there in the first place.  Helene’s boyfriend is loud, jovial and more than a bit of a flirt. He clearly disgusts Carol. When he dismisses the idea of eating a rabbit dinner, he promises to take Helene out on the town for a grand meal. Helene quickly places the skinned and seasoned rabbit in the tiny kitchen refrigerator. Carol is clearly upset that Helene is leaving her alone in the apartment but refuses to admit it. As Helene and her man step into the elevator to leave for some fun he points out that “something” is wrong with Carol and she should see someone. It is the first time we see Helene become upset. Perhaps a little too upset. She seems furious that he would insinuate that anything is wrong with her little sister.

Auto-pilot at the salon…
Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

We have already witnessed Carol’s strange manner of falling into her thoughts. She has drifted away while applying nail polish causing the client to ask if she is asleep. Despite this sort of behavior she is able to communicate well with her boss explaining that the salon is out of a particular shade of polish, she is polite and she never appears hostile. If anything, she appears shy but friendly. When we follow her on her lunch break it is clear she is on a sort of auto-pilot as she walks. The only things that cause her to snap out of her “daydreaming” are the sexual catcalls that greet her as she passes a street construction crew.

A quiet walk seems to be an open invitation to sexual advances…
Catherine Deneuve faces the catcalls.
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

The initial shot shows Carol’s back and working class construction men. But after the catcalling begins, Carol can’t help but glance. Suddenly the camera perspective on the loudest of the crew presents a somewhat distorted shot of the man. The camera’s perspective makes him appear slightly distorted and evil. Of course, anyone would feel uncomfortable in this situation. This male public assertion of sexuality and sexual intent displaces the identity of women. They become nothing more than an object for sex. It is threatening. However, there is something about that camera angle and the way in which Carol reacts that seems to be not quite right.

Cracks in the walls and the pavement.
Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

The other thing that snaps Carol out of “daydreaming” or zombie-like walking are a couple of cracks in the pavement. These cracks upon the cement ground which Carol treads cause her to halt and study them. It is as if the cracks in the pavement have pulled Carol into another type of “daydream.” So intense is her interest in these cracks, she calmly takes a seat on a public bench and stares at them. This is far more than “daydreaming.” This is at the very least OCD behavior only without any level of energy. Once again with hindsight, one can’t help but wonder what Carol is actually seeing as she stares at the cracks.

What does Carol see in the cracks?
Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

Perception and Gilbert Taylor’s cinematography is key to understanding Repulsion. Returning to the film’s opening shot, if one thinks about the way in which Polanski chose to displays the film’s credits — it is clear that was far more than a “creepy” method to indicate a genre. Initially the title and words appear to be coming out from behind the iris of the eyeball, but very quickly any logic to the way the words appear on the screen are not limited to the eye itself. The letters and names float about without any level of logical editing. The credits present themselves in a visually discordant manner. And as the words scroll about the screen, the eyeball and eye socket seem to be twitching, blinking and gaze out and around but not at all in coordination with the words. Actually, if a person only sees this film once there is a feeling that Polanski’s budget has caused the credits to be done in a ramshackle messy manner that might have been intended to be a harmoniously clever horror-genre opener that has failed and simply looks like a poor but ambitious choice. After viewing the film even only once, it clear that these credits and the way in which Deneuve’s eye is reacting is all intentional. There is no connection between the eye and the credits that roll about it.

Throughout the film’s first act, we see Carol’s limited interactions in only a few spaces. Actually, the spaces in which we see Carol interact are essentially limited to three places: The beauty salon, the streets on which she walks and her shared apartment. Polanski and Taylor are careful to pace the presentation of Carol’s perceptions of these spaces and interactions slow enough so that our awareness is initially limited. We visit the salon and the streets about three times. Each time a bit more is revealed. The reveals are not so much about the spaces or interactions as they are about the way in which Carol is perceiving them.

“Are you alright?”
Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

The busy beauty salon appears small and a bit cramped. The client, the beautician and Carol barely seem to fit into the room where facials, massages and manicures are performed. But when Carol loses her focus, drifts off and cuts the finger of her client — her tray falls to the ground. Suddenly it appears there is far more space in the room than we initially thought. As Carol stares at a spinning nail polish bottle we become disoriented by Gilbert Taylor’s camera. There is an odd expansion of space and shadow. Carol seems almost animalistic as she watches the spinning bottle. A tiny bottle which due to the placement of camera and use of lens looks bigger than it is.

When her boss inquires about what is wrong, we realize that she has missed three full days of work without having ever called the salon. When pushed for an explanation, Carol clumsily mutters that an “Aunt arrived for a visit unexpectedly.” The salon boss automatically assumes that Carol is telling her that she was ill due to menstruation, it is apparent that this was not the meaning Carol was attempting to imply. As a co-worker helps her into her street clothes she encages Carol in a conversation. She suggests that Carol take in a movie. She manages to bring Carol out of her “shell” and gets her to giggle as the girl describes a scene from a Charlie Chaplin movie she has just seen. Carol seems connected, but her laughter becomes to feel like a nervous reaction. As the girl goes to hand Carol her purse, she notices it is open. She looks inside and discovers the head of the rabbit waiting amongst a compact and lipstick.

Walking without focus and ever-increasing ticks.
Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

In the beginning of the film we meet a potential suitor for Carol. Played by John Fraser, this would-be suitor seems harmless enough. This is not to say that he isn’t persistent. He follows Carol on her lunch break. Sits himself down at her table and pushes to get a date. Carol is polite, but clearly not interested. Or is she? She never clearly brushes Colin off. As he follows her back to the salon he presses for a date. She seems shy, but not entirely dismissive. She smiles. The second time she encounters the ever-pushy Colin, she is clearly forcing a smile. Despite his humor and flirtation, she never gives a clear signal. However, most men would let it go. She clearly is not going to fully agree to a date, but Colin presses on.

The viewer’s first time in the sisters’ apartment, we discover that Carol can hear her sister having sex. As Helene reaches orgasm, Carol looks forward toward her sister’s room and covers her ears with her pillow. We know she dislikes Helene’s married boyfriend, but it is never clear why. However, she does not hesitate to toss out his things. When Helene asks Carol why she has thrown out his things, Carol gives a strong declaration that she simply does not like him. However she states this in a passive tone. We have already noticed that his straight razor has caught her eye and thoughts. The second time she notices it she picks it up and studies it. Her face and eyes dulled, she is physically mute of thought.

Studying a straight razor.
Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

When Helene and her boyfriend leave for a trip to Italy, Carol seems more than a little panicked. How long will they be gone? 10 or 15 days. Maybe. Carol’s need for more rigidly defined dates is not just for reassurance, it is as if despair and fear demand it. Helene refuses to cater to the silly insecurities of her grown sister. But as the two leave, Carol is clearly concerned. As much as she despises Helene’s boyfriend, she’d rather put up with him than be without her sister.

She is physically repulsed by Helene’s boyfriend. Even the scent of an undershirt makes her vomit. Yet when she pulls out the plate of uncooked rabbit, she stares at it in the same way she has stared at the cracks and the straight razor. There is no clear indication of what she might be thinking, but she is not repulsed. The scent of an undershirt makes her ill, but as the rabbit begins to rot in the living room it causes her no concern. The phone rings and we discover she has the straight razor which she sits on the rabbit’s plate. As we will soon learn, she uses that razor to cut off the rabbits head. A head which she stores in her purse.

Sister’s uncooked rabbit does not seem to bother Carol, but something about the bunny’s head is of particular interest. The first use of the straight razor.
Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

Looking back earlier in the film after her sister leaves for Italy, Carol walks about the apartment. She looks at the family photograph. She glances through her sister’s record collection. She walks into her sister’s bedroom. She looks around. She approaches her sister’s wardrobe. She opens the door and examines one of Helene’s sexy dresses. Carol seems to study the dress. As she moves the wardrobe’s mirrored door, we catch a quick glimpse of a man’s reflection behind her. It is a jarring moment. Without any sort of musical cue, it is a scene that never fails to make me jump.

It is shortly after this that the audience is put in the position of not knowing if the steps Carol seems to hear in her apartment are actually in her apartment or in one above or below. No, they must be in her apartment. We notice that her wardrobe is blocking a thus far unknown door. A light goes on behind that door. It may not always become obvious to the viewer upon the first viewing of the film, but this door is suspect. Where does it lead? Carol’s bedroom is opposite from Helene’s. Isn’t it? Wait, are the two bedroom now next to each other? Later those steps behind that door will force the door open — pushing Carol’s wardrobe out of the way. The man who emerges rapes Carol.

Sometimes the hall’s walls turn into a flesh-like surface. Other times aggressive male arms emerge to ravage and rape Carol.
Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

There is no question that these are rapes. But there no confusing the fact that Carol has imagined them. There is a bit of confusion regarding her reactions to these sexual violations. She seems at once horrified and aroused. We know these rapes are rape fantasies. We know this because we have seen Carol rush from her sister’s bedroom into the hall. She touches the hall wall and it appears to be a soft porous surface in which her hands leave an impression. Wait. Is the hall suddenly a wall of flesh? Soon arms will emerge from the wall body and seemingly sexual violate Carol. Once again, her reaction is a mix of shock, horror and possibly sexual pleasure. Later she will walk down the hallway which fills with outreaching, grabbing male arms.

A walk down the hall becomes a sexual threat that offers no escape.
Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

During one particularly brutal rape, the screen fades to black. When we return we find Carol laying nude on the floor of the hall. She does not look traumatized. It is actually the only time in the film that Carol looks relaxed. A jarring phone ring will snap her back into a state of frenzied paranoia and fear. The cracks are getting worse. They are no longer limited to just the two in the kitchen. At one point Carol cautiously approaches the childhood family photograph. As we see discomfort and fear grip her eyes and body, the wall behind the photograph cracks apart threatening to crumble to pieces. Carol flips on a light only to see the entire wall crack apart.

She had planned on getting the crack in the kitchen mended, but new cracks are emerging everywhere.
Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

As Carol descends into insanity her perspective has taken over every aspect of the apartment’s space. After her desperate suitor has attempted to call her over and over again, he has a few drinks and works up the nerve to show up at her front door. The once pushy, but somehow nice guy suddenly takes on a threatening aspect. Carol looks through her front door peep hole and so does Gilbert Taylor’s camera. Distorted and furious, Colin demands that Carol open the door or he will bust it down.

Turns out this is not an idle threat. He lunges at the door. Carol backs away from the door. She reaches for a heavy metal candle stick. Her once kindly suitor breaks through the front door’s lock and busts into Carol’s warped space. Even though he tries to apologize for his behavior and expresses his love and desire for Carol, it is too late. He is a threat. He is danger. The small entry way no longer appears small. It seems very dark and long. The camera’s perspective reveals a nosy elderly neighbor looking in as Colin tries to defend his actions.

Does this potential suitor really have good intentions? If so, why did he break the door’s lock to secure access to Carol’s apartment? A nosy neighbor watches from the hall.
John Fraser & Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

Carol refuses to make eye contact. When Colin notices the old neighbor spying on them, he walks down the once short entry way, the elderly woman rushes into her apartment. As he attempts to close the door, Carol’s fear turns to rage.

He just wants to be “with her.” Metal candlestick at the ready…
John Fraser & Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

Carol is no longer passive. She brutally attacks her suitor. Putting all her force into it, Carol bludgeons Colin to death. Blood splatters all over the door. Carol does not seem to be concerned that she has just murdered someone, but she is very upset by the sight of blood coming out of his ear and staining the door. She drags Colin down the ever-expanding hallway and manages to get his body into the tub of water that she had drawn earlier and had allowed to overflow. Suddenly full of manic energy, Carol uses the candlestick to hammer a shelf she pulls from the kitchen to act as a barricade for the apartment entryway.

It isn’t long before the landlord shows up. Carol gives us a peep hole view of Patrick Wymark. Like Colin, the landlord must bust his way into the apartment. At first angry at the state of the apartment, he quickly changes his tune as he looks at Carol in her almost sheer night gown. Soon rage gives way to lechery.

Peephole perspective: the unwanted visit from the landlord.
Patrick Wymark
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

As he brutishly attempts to mount Carol, she pulls out the straight razor and viciously begins slashing him. Filmed in black and white with Catherine Deneuve’s maniacal slashing, blood spurts everywhere. It only takes a few minutes before it is clear that Carol has hit some vital veins.

“You would not even have to worry about the rent…”
Patrick Wymark propositions Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

She has committed her second murder. Once again, she seems more concerned with the mess than the murder. She pushes the sofa over on top of the dead landlord to hid him and his mess from her view.

Insanity has almost completely taken over. As we see Carol sitting in the once small and modern bathroom, we notice that the tub is no longer directly next to the bathroom door. The tiled walls are gone. The bathroom looks old, wet and moldy. It also appears to go deeper than possible. This is not the bathroom we have seen before. Welcome to Carol’s perspective.

Over the course of the film nearly every aspect of Carol’s apartment has been shifted, re-shaped, extended, shortened, architecturally re-arranged and bent to fit within Carol’s skewed perception. It isn’t until Helene and her boyfriend return from their holiday that the apartment’s spacial and visual aspects are fully formed back into the spaces to which we were first introduced. In other words, as Helen enters the wrecked blood stained apartment that “reality” returns to our perspective.

As our realistic perspective returns we discover that Carol has slipped far beneath insanity. Her eyes appear to be frozen open. She almost appears to be dead. But in the most horrifying way, our protagonist has slipped into something far worse than death. She is found under her bed in a catatonic state. While we are given no clear indicators, it feels as if this will be the state she will remain. Can there be anything more terrifying than be shut off from reality and stuck in the darkest and murky waters of a ill mind.

There are more than a few things wrong with this “picture.”
Catherine Deneuve
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

As brilliant as Roman Polanski’s film and his use of Gilbert Taylor’s cinematography and Seamus Flannery’s art direction, there is another essential element to Repulsion that often is dismissed as “accidental” or “luck.” Catherine Deneuve gives a superb performance as Carol. At the time she was cast in Polanski’s film she was thought to be incredibly beautiful and might possibly have a strong career ahead of her in fashion modeling or light entertainment. Her appearance in the sensational French musical, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The film and she had garnished a great deal of well deserved attention, but once again — she was hardly more than a beautiful face. Jacques Demy had not required a great deal from her in the female leading role. Her own singing voice was not used. Essentially all she needed to do was look happy, mad and sad while lip synching to another’s voice. (Actually, she and all the actors were dubbed and they were required to sing along with the recordings.)

But her work in Repulsion is not just happy accident. Her presence and being fill the screen and linger in the mind. Her mannerisms, twitches, horror and cautious use of words is never doubted. It should be noted that Polanski and the two others who assisted him in adapting the screenplay knew very little about mental illness.

Catherine Deneuve proves her on-screen value as Carol
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

Deneuve’s stares and facial expressions are never over or under done. Somehow she captured the presence of a fractured mind. And she did so brilliantly. Barely a year would pass before Luis Buñuel pursued her to play the lead in the still controversial and highly regarded experimentation into the Surreal, Bell de jour. His decision to cast her laid not just in her angelic beauty, but in what he saw in Polanski’s film. This might be the other overly examined film from the 1960’s.

I cringe when I hear film scholars or critics dismiss her 1965 portrayal as a lucky use of “icy beauty.” …This is a memorable and valid on-screen performance. In fact there is very little of the “real” Catherine Deneuve present. If one is to fault any aspect of her performance it lies in the hands of the film’s stylist. The only thing about Repulsion that fails is Deneuve’s always flawless hair. Her face covered in sweat and smeared-on lipstick with eyes reflecting sheer terror, her hair is still brilliantly coiffed. Hair aside, I find it hard to believe that any other could have played this role better. And, of course, Deneuve has gone on to build one of the most enduring and important film careers in cinematic history. A year ago Pierre Salvadori managed to convince her to take the female lead in his little seen cinematic gem, In the Courtyard.

Oh no. Not another crack!?!?
Catherine Deneuve at 72 plays Mathilde
In the Courtyard
Pierre Salvadori, 2014
Cinematography | Gilles Henry

This was the first time I’ve ever seen a filmmaker sneak in a nod to her Repulsion performance. In the 2014 French independent film she plays a retired elderly woman who is slipping into a state of depression. Her character becomes obsessed with a crack in her living room.

Returning back to the theory of Repulsion being an examination of insanity’s perspective, as Helene stands back in shock and her boyfriend lifts the now catatonic and mentally absent sister to carry her toward the ambulance and police who are on their way — Polanski has Gilbert Taylor expertly flow through and over the apartment’s wrecked state. As always, Taylor’s camera work is steady and intently focused to slowly capture the film’s closing image. As we move closer to Carol’s childhood picture, Polanski finally allows us to actually see Carol as a child. The whole family is encaged and posing happily. Save Carol. The little girl stands rigid and staring off at something. Many cinephiles like to say that we are meant to think that she is staring at the man (father? uncle?) to her left. The idea being that the child is looking at her victimizer.

This does not hold up. As the camera moves in it is clear that she is not looking at anyone in this photograph. And based on the film’s shared perspective, her gaze has never been focused on anything within the realm of perceived reality. Polanski drives this point even more precisely as the image has been edited slowly to black out the rest of the photo. We can only see a little girl with a disturbing look on her face. The camera never stops it’s slow zoom. Taylor’s camera is aiming directly into young Carol’s right eye. The same eye from which the film’s title slipped out at the beginning of the film. The zoom continues until little Carol’s eye becomes nothing but speaks blurred into darkness.

Repulsion attempts to pull us to a restricted place that has been growing since childhood: the warped psyche of insanity.

And we come back to the childhood photograph of Carol. Polanski chooses to slowly zoom into Carol’s eye until it becomes a blur of particles. An isolated stare into horror.
REPULSION
Roman Polanski, 1965
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor

Matty Stanfield, 10.22.2015

The Warped Ones
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1960
Poster Designer Unknown to me.

Koreyoshi Kurahara established himself as an essential filmmaker from the end of the 1950’s to his final film, 1995’s Hiroshima. His early films are often categorized along with his French filmmaker contemporaries and La Nouvelle Vague — sometimes referred to as The Japanese New Wave.

Not only is this categorization overly-simplistic, it is not sensical. Post-WWII Japan youth culture experience was an entirely different situation than being a youth in France as the world entered the 1960’s. If one must apply his early films to a genre, The Seishun Eiga genre makes more sense. Japan entered the modern arena quickly and as Western influence started to merge with East, the youth of the time found themselves in a world that was paradoxical. Freedom and fun were changing in meaning and access while the culture remained rooted in a problematic elitist class structure that both attempted to oppress and repress. The atmosphere was ripe for rebellion.

High on Rebellion and howling at the sun!
Eiji Gô and Tamio Kawachi
The Warped Ones
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1960
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

Kurahara’s The Warped Ones opens with some truly ingeniously frantic camerawork. The viewer hears what sounds something like American Jazz and is then shown several key American Jazz artists. As if looking a vinyl record starting to spin on a turntable – the view begins to open up. The spinning increases, the music’s jazzy sway begins to verge into something similar to what we would now call Acid Jazz. As Toshiba Mayuzumi’s music slips into a sort of fevered pitch, Yoshio Mamiya’s cinematography spins faster. Within a matter of seconds the action on the screen starts with a failed con attempt by a young woman and young male friend who turns a Western tourist’s attention away so that the male friend can successfully pick the man’s pocket. As the two gleefully prepare to leave with their “earnings,” their grift is called out by a male journalist in a pressed suit.

Yuko Chishiro, Noriko Matsumoto and Tamio Kawachi.
The Warped Ones
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1960
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

Our two leading protagonists, Akira and Yuki, have been caught. Kashiwagi and his fiancee, Rumiko, watch as the two are led off to jail. Before the audience even has a chance to catch it’s breath, Kurahara drops us into a mail prison where where we see Akira sweat, scream, scowl, fight, brawl, party and create chaos during his frenzied stay in jail. As the music stays in pace with the cinematography and action, credits are presented in a stylistic way. Everything we see in the jail is brutally primal — yet Akira seems to be somehow enjoying everything we see.

Once the credits finish, Tamio Kawachi’s Akira is being released. He appears to have made a new best pal, Eiji Gô’s Masaru. These two boys are from the same coin, but Masaru might be from a different side. A rebellious criminal, it is immediately clear that he is a bit more stable than Akira. As these two steal a car and race ahead it, Akira’s behavior is more than just bit disturbing. Kawachi’s performance is a true work of film acting art. Almost constantly in motion and distorting his face to match what we can only imagine what must be churning in his psychopathic mind. Akira’s movements, actions and manner of speech are less human and more animalistic. His brutality shines through even in brief acts of passive “kindness.” It is an unforgettable acting turn.

More animal than human…
Tamio Kawachi
The Warped Ones
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1960
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

Masaru is not nearly so unhinged, but he is most certainly operating within a very skewed moral compass. It doesn’t take Akira long to find his partner in crime, Yuki. Yuko Chishiro’s performance as Yuki seems like it could be the prototype for The Hyper Japanese Girl that we now see so often represented in Japanese Film and Anime. Ever bouncing and seemingly positive in energy and almost manic-like gleeful high-pitched laughter, she is almost a walking stereotype. There are a few things that set her apart from this stereotypical idea: she is a scheming, rage-filled street prostitute grifter who would also appear to be more than a bit of a sociopath. Her bouncy energy and high-pitched laughter are a disguise to the sour intentions waiting to happen If Akira represents The Id, Yuki represents a feminized version of cruel menace.

The Id & His Pretty Partner…
Tamio Kawachi and Yuko Chishiro
The Warped Ones
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1960
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

When these three walking vessels of aggression bond in an elaborate plan of vengeance on the journalist who put two of them in jail, a sort of Satanic Trinity is formed. Charles Manson would have run in fear of these three.

Koreyoshi Kurahara’s classic tale of human cruelty and vengeance still packs a strange punch to the gut. This might be the main reason I cringe when I read or hear this movie referred to as part of The Japanese New Wave or that Wave that was going down in Japan. There is nothing of cinematic reference to be found in The Warped Ones. In fact, every single thing we see and hear on the screen feels not only new and fresh — 50 years on, this movie still feels disorientingly current. The Warped Ones is also startling because it manages to be vibrantly alive and simultaneously one of the most nihilistic movies I’ve ever seen. This being stated, Kurahara’s mean little movie represents a major shift in Japanese filmmaking.

Even Charles Manson would run for his life if this unholy trinity approached… Eiji Gô, Yuko Chishiro, and Tamio Kawachi The Warped Ones Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1960 Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

Aside from being a deeply weird, this film operates from several different perspectives that alternate between the obvious and the ambiguous. On the one hand , Koreyoshi Kurahara’s The Warped Ones is a perverse cautionary tale of Western influence and youth run amok. Akira, Yuki and Masaru are not grooving to rebellious rock music. No, they seemed to be steeped in American Jazz. The young couple whom they view as their enemies are fairly innocuous but easily tempted toward sexual influence. Akira holds them and their classical music tastes in disdain. When he breaks one of their classical record albums it is clearly an act of anger against the sound of elitism as much as it is against their desired style of living.

Tamio Kawachi
The Warped Ones
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1960
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

At the same time the film can be perceived to function as both societal and cultural commentary. These lost kids aren’t grooving to rock, but to the music of classic American Jazz. These hoodlums are most certainly rebelling against their world, but are attempting to act out against their established institutions. The police and the prison systems are little more than jokes. It is in jail that Akira seems to have a great deal of fun and meets a new friend. Once released from their shared cells, they have “learned” nothing and feel no need to “repent” for their “crimes“. They simply seem to have been given the opportunity to get a bit of a rest and are fully re-energized. Once they hit the streets they are literally high on rebellion. They know that what they do is wrong. They simply do not care.

Eiji Gô & Tamio Kawachi
The Warped Ones
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1960
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

Yuki has been released sooner and has returned to selling her sex without any seeming issue, problem or regret. She is equally eager to return to conning and grifting her clients as soon as she meets up with Akira and his new friend. She is also more than eager to tease Masaru with her sexuality. Faking anger and cloyingly demanding that he look away as she changes outfits, she clearly enjoys his noticing. She quickly falls into a relationship with Masaru. Akira has no interest in relationships or bonding. He is interested in sex and satisfying his sexual urges, but beyond an orgasm he has no interest.

Yuki seems to hold no erotic interest for Akira Yuko Chishiro & Tamio Kawachi
The Warped Ones
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1960
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

I generally dismiss the idea of this film as “cautionary.” I am not even certain if Kurahara was trying to teach his audience anything. This perversely entertaining movie is concerned with plot. Not any sort of lofty intention. The Warped Ones is, however, very much concerned with realism and artistry. Even on a limited budget and shooting on location, the filmmaker pushes his cinematographer, cast and post-production musical composer and Akira Suzuki (his superb Film Editor) to push toward only the highest level of creativity and skill. Even though the action and movements are fast, chaotic and frenzied — all is presented with style and off-kilter beauty. It would be unfair to deny this film’s sensuality.

Violently tossed down…
The Warped Ones
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1960
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

It is clear that Akira rapes Fumiko. She is violently kidnapped, thrown into what appears to be a dry beach sandbar with such strength that she loses consciousness. As Yuki and Masaru romp off to make out and have some fun at the beach, Akira is left alone with the innocent and beautiful young victim. While we know this is rape, the scene is filmed in a shockingly sensual manner. Both the rapist and his victims’ bodies are captured to accentuate their mutual youthful beauty. The horror of what has happened it only clear after the act is over.

Noriko Matsumoto & Tamio Kawachi
The Warped Ones
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1960
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

This is a unique and twisted tale of human cruelty in which the idea of vengeance is taken to a whole new level. The pursuit of this vengeance is truly psychopathic, psychosexual, disturbing, realistic and unapologetically perverse. But it is Yoshio Mamiya’s hyper and artistically disorienting cinematography that really seals the deal. The opening shot of this movie is jaw-dropping. The whole film is prone to make the jaw drop. It is all the more fascinating to note that this movie was shot in 1959.

Tamio Kawachi
The Warped Ones
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1960
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

It has an oddly current feel. It is also important to note that this film features one of the more memorable cinematic endings. The ending almost presses into circular logic. The camera sprints up, spins and sends us into the human void. From beginning to unforgettable end, The Warped Ones is a twisted ride of a movie. Dark, angry and lusting for blood, this movie is a strange and brilliant cinematic experience.

Koreyoshi Kurahara was a varied filmmaker. He never stuck to one style or core idea. But in 1967 he adapted Yukio Mishima’s third novel. Mishima’s brilliance as a writer is well noted, but film versions of his work usually fall painfully short of capturing anything close to what his words created. However, Kurahara came very close with his re-working of Thirst for Love. Koreyoshi Kurahara adaptation of Yukio Mishima’s novel is a bit dated, but brilliantly conceived. Brilliantly edited, lit and featuring valid use of sound design, it is once again Yoshio Mamiya’s cinematography that takes a crucial role in making this film work.

Thirst for Love
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1967
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

The other major asset for the film is the performance given by the great Ruriko Asaoka. The success of Kurahara’s adaptation wisely depends on her acting skills. It is tragic how uninformed most of Western Culture is to the Eastern Film Art. Ruriko Asaoka, like her director, never seems to gain the recognition deserved outside of hardcore cinephiles. Aside from being ethereally beautiful, oozing eroticism with little effort, born with expressive eyes and gifted with an uniquely effective manner of acting — Asaoka was and remains an actor with charisma and true screen presence.

Ruriko Asaoka
Thirst for Love
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1967
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

She worked for Kurahara more than a couple of times, but it is in Thirst for Love that she is given full reign.

Unlike most who have attempted to adapt Mishima’s work, Kurahara does not aim to exploit the transgressive or exploit the often perverse sexuality. Instead he employs Mamiya’s camera skills to show us just enough for us to know what is going on. The editing and sound design also play strong roles in conveying tone.

Ruriko Asaoka
Thirst for Love
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1967
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

It is here that the film sometimes has a “dated” quality. However this “datedness” is a result of far too many late ’60’s/’70’s lesser filmmaker over-use of similar stylistic choices that have caused us to feel this way. In Thirst for Love these quick edits, zooms and flashbacks via still photography are all put to exquisite use. Filmed in a lush and sensuous monochrome gone black and white, the movie lulls us into visual beauty as the characters’ individual and shared transgressions / perversities are presented and/or explored. But once these aspects have been revealed Kurahara uses jolting fast scenes of color. The color used is blood red and it further saturates the tone off the screen and into our brains.

Ruriko Asaoka
Thirst for Love
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1967
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

Another major key in this adaptation is that Kurahara manages to largely avoid any alterations of Mishima’s novel. Please correct me if I’m wrong as I am writing strictly from my memory — but the only major change made in this film adaptation is that our female protagonist’s backstory involving her deceased husband has been made for us to suspect that the widow’s relationship with her husband was far more tainted. I do believe that all we are told in the book is that she was widowed as a result of her husband fatal battle with Typhoid. In the film version, his treatment of Asaoka’s “Etsuko” was bad. So bad that Etsuko may or may not have done something about it. The rest of the film seems to come directly from the great novel.

Shaving “Father”
Ruriko Asaoka & Nobuo Nakamura
Thirst for Love
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1967
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

The plot revolves around a deeply dysfunctional wealthy family in which the elderly patriarch has not only taken his son’s widow, Etsuko, into his home — he has placed her in his bedroom. His daughter-in-law is now his mistress. The elderly man also provides home to another widowed sister-in-law and children as well as his lay-about buffoon of a son and his admittedly odd wife. This is a sick home. And all living within it fully accept the situation. Soon Etsuko develops a sexual attraction to the family’s gardner.

Younger and from a lower class strata Etsuko views her desire as inappropriate. This is of particular interest as she is clearly not bothered by her brother-in-law and sister-in-law constantly hinting that a three-way relationship would be more than welcome. Not to mention that it seems to be normal conversation that Etsuko should bear their father’s child and have the only living son raise the child as his own. But to desire sex with the hired help is inappropriate.

The Gardner & The Widow
Tetsuo Ishidate & Ruriko Asaoka
Thirst for Love
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1967
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

Ruriko Asaoka’s performance is interestingly minimal. For the first half of the film, all emotion is limited to her expressive eyes. As we “non-see” the elderly man she calls “Father” bring her to orgasm, it only takes a shot of her eyes or face for us to know that she is both repulsed and becoming numb the further she drifts into her place within the family.

Her desire for the young man grows to obsession. Obsession pushes her toward full cruelty and insanity. Nothing is hidden from us, but all is conveyed via careful lighting, truly unique camera work and Asaoka’s brilliant performance. This is Mishima. None of this is going to take us to a good place. As he leads us to the story’s disturbing resolution, Kurahara establishes a strange world in which Etsuko roams.

Trying to leave a trace or a scar…
Ruriko Asaoka
Thirst for Love
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1967
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

Sprawling but interesting claustrophobic, she walks about the home and grounds often in a state of drifting despair. She eroticizes and mentally imagines objects to self-destruct. When she does leave the home and it’s decaying grounds, she walks down a long road. A walk down this road is like being overshadowed by prison walls. The surroundings outside the grounds of the family home seem to almost be more threatening than the home itself. Isolated, sad and doomed — it is unclear if these massive walls are there to keep the family in or the rest of Japan out.

A serious talk outside the compound against that wall…
Ruriko Asaoka & Tetsuo Ishidate Thirst for Love Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1967 Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

By the time Etsuko finally fulfills her true desires her choices and actions are shocking. The filming of violence throughout the film is all the more dire due to the monochrome black and white lack of color. Had this film utilized color for scenes of violence (both passive and horrific) it would have looked cheap and exploitive.

Thirst for Love is an uncomfortably beautiful cinematic experience captured by mixing the vile, the visceral, the sensual and darkest corners of human desires merged with the despaired. Is it melodrama? Art Horror? Experimental? Art House? Cinematic Provocation? …Yes. It is. And it is fucking brilliant.

Ruriko Asaoka
Thirst for Love
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1967
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

Both of these films have been decently restored by The Criterion Collection and have been issued via their Eclipse Collection Series. Another bone I’ve been picking with Criterion for some time. While I understand that Western Audience is more familiar with films like Pale Flower, Tokyo Drifter, Vengeance Is Mine and the infamous In the Realm of the Senses — that doesn’t mean that films like these two need be pushed out with only limited restorations and no extra focus.

Tetsuo Ishidate
Thirst for Love
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1967
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

Please do not misunderstand me, I adore all of the above mentioned films and the work Criterion has done for each. But if you’ve not seen these two Koreyoshi Kurahara films, you are missing two amazing cinematic experiences. And I do feel both The Warped Ones and Thirst for Love are superior to these other full-fledged members of The Criterion Collection.

Ruriko Asaoka
Thirst for Love
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1967
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

“Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation…”  — Yukio Mishima, 1968

Ruriko Asaoka & Tetsuo Ishidate
Thirst for Love
Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1967
Cinematography | Yoshio Mamiya

Matty Stanfield, 11.12.15

Laura Dern as a woman in deep trouble…
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

There is an early key scene in David Lynch’s Inland Empire. It is between one of several characters played by Laura Dern and another played by the great Grace Zabriskie. A neighbor has dropped in to introduce herself to her movie star neighbor. A bit uncomfortable, but friendly — Nikki invites the woman in for a cup of coffee. After the neighbor sips a bit, she begins to enquire about Nikki’s next movie role. A role that the neighbor feels Nikki has most certainly secured Though it is clear that Nikki is unaware she has been cast.

It only takes a few minutes before Ms. Zabriskie gets to the actual reason for her unannounced visit:

“Is there a murder in your film?”
“Uh, no. It’s not part of the story.”
“No, I think you are wrong about that.”
“No.”
“Brutal fucking murder!“
“I don’t like this kind of talk; the things you’ve been saying. I think you should go now.”
“Yes. Me, I… I can’t seem to remember if it’s today, two days from now, or yesterday. I suppose if it was 9:45, I’d think it was after midnight! For instance, if today was tomorrow, you wouldn’t even remember that you owed on an unpaid bill. Actions do have consequences. And yet, there is the magic. If it was tomorrow, you would be sitting over there.”

Her finger points across the room. Laura Dern’s Nikki’s eyes turn following the direction of her neighbor’s finger.  And with a turning pan of the cheap digital camera we and Nikki are transported to a different time. Maybe even a different side of reality. Maybe…

Grace Zabriskie points toward the unknown brutality…
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

Way back in 2006 after experiencing David Lynch’s Inland Empire for the first time I wrote this:

Well, kids — I saw the new David Lynch movie today. Yes, INLAND EMPIRE is almost a full 3 hours of Lynchian assault.

Did I like it? Yes, I think I did. Actually, I may love it. I think I am still processing the experience. Trust me. This is a cinematic experience.

While I did find it a bit long, I was never bored.  My eyes, ears and mind were stuck to the screen the entire duration. There were more than a few people in the audience who had seen it twice already. I have to agree with those audience members — this is a film which seems to require multiple viewings. 

I am still trying to figure it all out in my head. What did all those symbols mean? Most importantly, what does it symbolize to have Nastassja Kinski sit on a sofa while Suicide Girl types dance and lip sync to the late/great Nina Simone? I guess she and them could symbolize a lot of things.  And, why the Beck song?

Word to the wise: if you do see it — stay thru the final credits.

I love that the cinema in which I saw the movie was playing selections from the new Tom Waits compilation CD, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards. This turned out to be quite right for setting the tiny San Francisco cinema’s atmosphere.

Hypnotic, oddly gorgeous, without linear thought/plot and featuring a brilliant performance from Laura Dern — INLAND EMPIRE is horrific, beautiful, confusing, perverse, sad, funny, lost and ultimately a brilliant cinematic slight of hand.  If you like David Lynch you will not want to miss it. I plan on seeing it again with a couple of my pals.

“Come on, baby
Jump up
Jump back
Well, now, I think you’ve got the knack
Wow, wow!”
Laura Dern & Friends(?)
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

Three years later, I wrote this:

David Lynch at his very best. This is the first film he has made which rivals the brilliance of Blue Velvet. Tho quite long, the movie is NOT dull.

Blessed with an incredible acting turn by Laura Dern who seems to be wandering through the consciousness of an actor in way over her head and possibly sharing that space with a demented film maker, INLAND EMPIRE is almost impossible to describe.

This experimental film shows how much a filmmaker can do with equipment available to all of us. It also serves as a reminder that just because we have access to the equipment — no one without such untethered genius can use it as well.

Sound and image have seldom merged better.

INLAND EMPIRE is a puzzle of a film that will be pulling in viewers for decades to come. Without question, this is an important film.

“Ye-ye-ye-yeah
Move around the floor in a Loco-motion!”
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

Not too long ago on Letterboxd I wrote:

One of my all-time favorite films is also one of the most experimental I’ve ever seen. This is a brilliant motion picture experience captured with cheap video cameras.

Interpretation is certainly open-ended. Even still, I’ve always viewed this as an actor who has lost her identity in a role.

But even more unsettling is the proposition that manipulation of “identity” could potential lead one into some horrific alternate realities. Are they real or are they each operating in some sort of parallel universe?

Best to just pretend you’re seated in dark cinema.

Turn out the lights. Turn up the volume. Just watch and listen.  Allow Inland Empire to wash over you. As it does, you are probably going to discover some vague connection that is as surreal as the film itself.

If you are not someone who does not appreciates David Lynch, experimental art or if you’re afraid of the dark — do not even attempt to watch it.

Laura Dern
On the run and lost…
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

Having recently watched Inland Empire the other night on a pristine German-imported blu-ray, the film remains fresh, disturbing and enigmatic as ever.

The film floods over me like some sort of brilliant wave of sound, paint and amplified humanity. I find it difficult to articulate what grabs me. But it grabs me every time I see it.

As someone who has dealt with panic attacks and disorientation, there is a spastic sort of resonation. However, this would be me, a member of the audience, projecting myself onto David Lynch’s carefully crafted and often grubby Epic of Surreal Cinematic Masterpiece.

Yes, that is what I wrote. I used the “masterpiece” word. For me, Inland Empire is a cinematic masterpiece.

I refuse to be swayed.

It is filled with odd sort of “clues” that seem to dangle and blow like thin strings refusing to tie together.

The logic is circular and filled with menace.

There is more symbology going on than one can ever hope to rattle even with the sturdiest of sticks.

A meta-film to beat all meta. A cinematic experiment without a clearly stated thesis beyond the posters tagline: “A Woman In Trouble.”

“What the fuck happened here?” I say: “He come to a reapin’ what he had been sowin’, that’s what.” They say: “Fucker been sowing some kind of heavy shit…”
Laura Dern
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

As the woman (or women) in trouble, Laura Dern was given an amazing task as an actor. A task that she not only managed to achieve — Laura Dern rose above any sort of expectation. The lines between acting and reality are simultaneously drawn, twisted, subverted and blurred beyond recognition. Dern seems to literally become entwined with digital signals that form the movie itself. By stating this, I mean to write that this actress is not simply the focus of most of the film’s images —  Laura Dern’s performance and presence folds into digital images that David Lynch’s cameras capture.

This performance even amps itself beyond Dennis Hopper’s brilliant turn in Blue Velvet. The only reason it has never been given similar credit is because of the often exasperating “lengths” to which Inland Empire stretches, bends, loops and merges to form and invert itself.

For various reasons, I’ve found myself spending time with this particular movie.

I have to confess I was relieved when viewings were no longer required. But with the arrival of this blu-ray, I jumped back into the surreal madness of Lynchian Vision. I did so without request or hesitation.

“So, you have a new role to play, I hear?”
Laura Dern
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

In the end, for me Inland Empire is a complex exploration of human identity. The identity of an artist who finds her non-professional actor’s life begins to morph, twitch, mingle and merge with those of her roles. So vested in her performance, the complexity of a new film’s character splinters into creation of multiple versions and films. The ultimate artistic nightmare.

Forever chasing her selves through horrific and dismal set-ups. Just as she might be about to latch on to the core of herself she is sent running after another lost figment. A rambling psychological, visceral, emotional and dangerous trap. Her identity becomes so fragmented and polarized that the audience shares in her existential conundrum.

“This is a story that happened yesterday. But I know it’s tomorrow.”
Laura Dern
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

I could not help but feel slightly alarmed when a person on Twitter, known as The Movie Shrink,  sent me a link to a new viewpoint regarding a movie. The movie happened to be Inland Empire. @Plisskenboon’s translation of David Lynch’s strange epic is precise and self-assured.

I can’t state that I’m in full agreement, but it is an impressive deconstruction and evaluation of this Lynchian World that forever runs about within the confines of The Inland Empire. Um, yeah, it is a real place.

(You would be surprised how many people do not realize this.)

Splintered, fragmented and distorted…
Laura Dern
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

Check it out. …if you dare:

http://plisskensmovies.blogspot.co.nz/2015/03/inland-empire.html

A person, a woman, an actor, her character(s) and shared identities are forever trapped…
Laura Dern
INLAND EMPIRE
David Lynch, 2006

“This is a story that happened yesterday. But I know it’s tomorrow.”

Matty Stanfield, 11.20.15

Uh, oh. Trouble is coming from all sides as Ken Russell takes British Film into the 1970’s. Despite on-going demand, Time Warner still refuses to allow us to take a full-on second look back. Britain’s most infamous film actually belongs to a United States based corporation. The Devils Ken Russell, 1971 Cinematography | David Watkin

When one thinks of 1960’s Film Art, the mind does not immediately jump to thoughts of British cinema. Most of us think of France’s La Nouvelle Vague, Germany’s Neuer Deutsche Film, Italy’s NeoRealism film movement, The Japanese New Wave or The Polish New Wave from which Britain did snatch Roman Polanski. Certainly there were groundbreaking British films that caught the spirit of London’s Swinging 60’s Era, but many of these films have aged rather poorly. Just think of Petulia, Morgan!, Darling, Billy Liar or Georgy Girl.  If honest, what really still works about these films is related to a time capsule interest. Many of these British films are quite valid (think A Taste of Honey, This Sporting Life, Room At The Top, A Hard Day’s Night, Seance on a Wet Afternoon, Performance ) but the majority have not held up as well as one might hope.

This is not true across the board. Stanley Kubrick’s British work has only gotten better with time and Michelangelo Antonioni’s visit into Swinging London culture of the time, Blow Up, remains a vital work. However, are these truly British films? It would seem that both of these filmmakers were in a sort of transitionary position. Antonioni was visiting England. Kubrick was still fairly new to British culture.

The great Julie Christie is The Ideal Woman of 1965’s British satire of Swinging London, but the film barely registers beyond nostalgia now. Darling John Schlesinger, 1965 Cinematography | Kenneth Higgins

Most of the iconic British films of the 1960’s are simply limited to nostalgia. Guy Hamilton, Andy Milligan, Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz and Lindsay Shonteff are exceptions but much of what they were trying to convey would soon better estimated by the likes of Alan Parker and most especially Mike Leigh. Ken Loach would not truly find his voice until he entered his 50’s in the 1990’s. There was also a good share of attention to The Angry Young Man of the day. Tony Richardson had moments of brilliance but looking back he seemed to have been challenged by what style of film best suited his voice. Richard Lester certainly left a mark, but here again we are slipping into time capsule pop culture moments.

The British New Wave is also largely obscured by the mega-epics of David Lean’s heavily praised, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago are considered to be a cinematic masterpieces. I’ve never been particularly impressed. To be honest, I’ve never made it through Lawrence of Arabia without falling asleep. Carol Reed’s adaptation of the stage musical, Oliver! was another huge British hit of the 1960’s that pushed pass the more reflexive films of the day.

There were two particularly strong and solitary British Film Artists who were finding new methods of cinematic language. Nicolas Roeg would soon move from the cinematographer chair to that of director and change the face of film editing as it was known. Ken Russell’s work for the BBC and his adaptation of Larry Kramer’s adaptation of DH Lawrence’s Women In Love all stand alone and unique in offering new ways of using film to express ideas and to tell stories. And he really stole the anticipated reigns of the film biography when The Music Lovers slammed onto movie screens across the world in 1970.

Ken Russell welcomes us to the 1970’s via way of 16h Century France as “the wife” of a Priest makes her way past the destruction of the Roman-Catholic Church… Gemma Jones The Devils Ken Russell, 1971 Cinematography | David Watkin

As British Film headed into the 1970’s some firm and potent voices formed. Certainly Stanley Kubrick’s A Clock Work Orange is a British Film. All American cultural ideas have fallen off his cinematic map. John Schlesinger pretty much left England for America. Ken Russell defied all expectations with his searing and important 1971 film, The Devils. As it turns out Ken Russell, Nicolas Roeg and Stanley Kubrick were not alone. The thing is some of the new British voices got somehow lost in the mix. Barney Platts-Mills’ may have only made one film in the 1960’s, but it is a powerful entry into British Film History. Three other filmmakers also created work not only ahead of the cultural curve — they challenged it and ran their work close to the edge of the rails.

As we stumble forward toward the third decade of the 21st Century, The British Film Institute has gone deep within the corners of their storage closets to re-release a couple of seldom seen motion pictures that capture 1960’s London in whole new ways. Most of these titles were dusted off, restored, re-released within the UK and issued to DVD/Blu-Ray between 2009 and 2011.

The British Film Festival pulled several legendary but almost forgotten films and re-issued them to DVD/Blu-Ray in 2010 and 2011. These “lost” films of Jack Bond, Jane Arden, Joseph Despins and William Dumaresq teach us that Ken Russell and Stanley Kubrick were not alone in finding new ways to capture stories and ideas for the British Screen.

Two of these four filmmakers were actually Canadian born. Even still, these two ex-pats of Canada artists show no signs of unfamiliarity with the setting of their two crucial films that BFI re-issued several years back for the first time in over 40 years. The other two filmmakers are most certainly British and have cinematic voices which come close to that of Ken Russell and Nicolas Roeg. Like Russell / Roeg, these two British Film Artists were well-versed but often Anti-Intellectual in the way they approached their work. They were far more focused on the visual and the use of film editing. Rebels all, but each were reeling out their rebellion from different core identities. Unlike Ken Russell and Nicolas Roegs’ work of the 1960’s, all four of the other Film Artists will not appeal to a number of people, but it is hard to imagine anyone disputing their importance.

I’m currently exploring the work of a number of British filmmakers who are new to me. I plan on writing more on the art and collaborations of Jane Arden and Jack Bond. The work these two created almost defies terminology, but I’m going to give it my best shot!

But for this post, I want to touch on two films. The first of these two was born out of the mixed theatre and social service ideals of the great Joan Littlewood. “The Mother of Modern Theatre” devoted the second half of her life working with the young people of East London who were lost, without purpose or supervision. These young people were in constant threat of falling prey to all manner of trouble. Her idea was to create a space where these teenagers could be allowed to hang out and “act” out their issues, challenges and ideas. Firmly grounded in the arts but against what she viewed as Elitism of The National Theatre. Her Theatre Royal Stratford East was free of pretension and open to everyone. It was here that Barney Platts-Mills was inspired to scrap together a bit of money to make an amazing little film called Bronco Bullfrog.

Non-actors, Anne Gooding & Del Walker, “play” fictionalized versions of themselves and contemplate their futures.
Bronco Bullfrog
Barney Platts-Mills, 1969
Cinematography | Adam Barker-Mill

Bronco Bullfrog stars non-actors who had been working with each other under the loose guidance of Joan Littlewood. While the plot is deceptively simple, a great deal of information about the grimness of urban decay, lack of parenting and dystopian boredom come through loud and clear. Glam and style-free, this is a study of teenagers floating along without purpose, direction or hope. Interestingly, it is not all gloom and doom. The characters of Bronco Bullfrog start to find their way as the film heads to conclusion. This is a gem of a film that has never received the praise or attention it deserved. As good as this movie is, it can hardly stand-up when positioned next to Joseph Despins and William Dumaresqs’ ultra-strange and unforgettable twisted little movie, Duffer.

A good 6 years before anyone had seen the dark surrealism and humor of David Lynch, this low-budget experimental film serves as welcome warning that the art of filmmaking is about to take an innovative, creative and altogether new turn. Kit Gleave as Duffer Joseph Despins & William Dumaresq, 1971 Cinematography | Jorge Guerra

Joseph Despins and William Dumaresq crafted this weird and entertaining movie on a budget so low it is probably best not to state it. The camera work is surprisingly solid. Actually the cinematography is far more than solid, it is artistically sound. Cinematographer, Jorge Guerra, may not have had the best equipment but he most certainly knew how to use it. The shots are often brilliant.

There is no sound. The narration and voices were recorded by a different cast. It only takes a few minutes before it is clear that the lack of sound was not going to be a deficit. In fact, the creative dubbing actually adds to this film in more ways than one. Comical and often horrifying, the dubbed dialogue serves exceptionally as an aide to the film’s surrealism, dark comedy, menace and horror.

“WoManAmal!!!” Duffer’s junkie gay keeper heaps on the abuse and chronicles it all for underground porn.
William Dumaresq as “Louis-Jack”
Duffer
Joseph Despins & William Dumaresq, 1971
Cinematography | Jorge Guerra

The dubbing actually heightens the discomfort as we watch a young man attempt to reconcile the emotional, physical and sexual abuse of his older junkie boyfriend by engaging in an affair with a female prostitute. Enduring the sort of sadistic torment one seldom sees addressed in film, Despins and Dumaresq were extremely clever in presenting it in very dark comical ways that disturb but never so much that one needs to run for cover. The kind but obviously more than a bit twisted herself, prossie called Your Gracie gives the lost teen some solace while fully utilizing him as a tool.

Erna May as “Your Gracie” is using Kit Gleave’s “Duffer,” but he hopes she is saving his masculinity… Duffer Joseph Despins & William Dumaresq, 1971 Cinematography | Jorge Guerra

As the KINK/BDSM with his male keeper becomes more severe and his trysts with his female lover decrease — Duffer is pulled into his male lover’s Horse addiction and begins to suffer one of the most bizarre psychosomatic delusions I’ve ever seen. The poor kid’s delusions continue to morph into what appears to be a psychotic break. This twisted, funny, unsettling and fascinating experimental film deals with almost every aspect of human cruelty and horror imaginable. And just to amp up Duffer’s already potent cinematic stew, we gradually begin to suspect that our protagonist may not be the most reliable narrator.

Just a bi-sexual boy walking through 1970 Notting Hill either on his way from or toward abuse at the hands of older suitors.
Kit Gleave in his only film role…
Duffer
Joseph Despins & William Dumaresq, 1971
Cinematography | Jorge Guerra

As the film unspools more perversities and jaw-drop moments at break-neck speed, we are constantly given an exceptional examination of 1970’s Notting Hill. You may think you’ve seen urban decay and dystopian-like settings, but Duffer presents an England few of us have seen. Filmed on location and on the very cheap, this is perplexing and truly extraordinary view of the state of things circa 1969-1970. I realize that some of you will be annoyed that I’m grouping this film into the 1960’s British New Wave, but Duffer is clearly set in the 1960’s. This is not the 1970’s.

The film begins with Duffer sitting alone by the water. A pretty young woman pauses as she crosses a bridge far above the handsome boy. As the film whirls to conclusion we find him once again in the same place. It is impossible to not ponder where the film’s reality begins or ends. In fact, there is a distinct possibility that none of it is real. However there are just as many clues that all of what see presented has happened in reality. I’m not dropping a spoiler here, the viewer begins to distrust poor Duffer almost immediately. This is a narrator we are unable to trust. But the most jarring aspect of this film is that it presents itself solidly within the Surrealist Context.

All alone in his thoughts…
Duffer
Joseph Despins & William Dumaresq, 1971
Cinematography | Jorge Guerra

It is important to note that as much as I praise Duffer, it is not for all tastes. While never truly graphic, it is most definitely profane and very perverse. The humor is so dark that many will feel guilty laughing. This is one demented movie. It also features a deeply strange musical score from the composer who gave the world the 1960’s Broadway smash, Hair. Galt McDermot’s score plays like something you would hear in an alternate universe Tin Pan Alley. Just when you think you will only be hearing a piano — a quickly use of electronics starts to grind forward.

“Mind how you go…” No where in Notting Hill is safe!
Duffer
Joseph Despins & William Dumaresq, 1971
Cinematography | Jorge Guerra

Duffer screams out for repeated viewings to understand, to ensure that what you think you’ve just seen was actually shown and for the simple fact that this movie is endlessly entertaining. And trust me, this movie gets under your skin. Once it slips under, it stays there. In addition, something about Duffer seems to be signaling the audience to watch out for David Lynch. Were it not so very British, it could easily be mistaken for something a young David Lynch might have created. Unique, innovative, disturbing, haunting, funny and altogether original, Duffer is a must see lost British Cinematic Treasure.

Well there is nothing quite like watching your lover’s home movies abusing you…
Kit Gleave watches what we can only guess hurt a great deal.
Duffer
Joseph Despins & William Dumaresq, 1971
Cinematography | Jorge Guerra

I honestly found no flaw in Duffer.

Just pulled back into darkness after being “fixed” for activities best kept there…
Duffer
Joseph Despins & William Dumaresq, 1971
Cinematography | Jorge Guerra

I loved this film, but the work of both Jane Arden and Jack Bond really blew me away. Blown out the window and lying on the pavement outside our San Francisco home, the collaborations of Arden and Bond require more than a little thought and meditation. I’m still letting their three films digest, but I’ll be writing about them soon.

Pushing Feminist Agenda, Drug Experimentation, Examination and Destruction of an identity born of societal and cultural domination, Jane Arden & Jack Bond pull us into the dangerous threat of absolute madness…
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Matty Stanfield, 12.23.2015

Watching, thinking and studying from all perspectives.
Separation
Jane Arden
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography| Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

The collaborative work between artists and lovers, Jack Bond and Jane Arden, had become the thing of legend. While all three of their feature length films had been acclaimed and considered to represent two of the most important voices in British Cinema, this was largely thanks to the film reviews that lingered on long after they had screened. Jack Bond was coasting on the British New Wave film scene of the 1960’s seemingly destined for great success when he met Jane Arden. She proved to be the perfect match for the talented filmmaker both personally and professionally. Jane Arden was an actor and frequent BBC talking head when she met Jack Bond. Eccentric, intellectual, beautiful, talented, innovative and always controversial — Jane Arden flourished to great heights after she met Bond. Neither of these artists were content to go with the flow of their time. Arden proved to be an outspoken Feminist, provocateur and filmmaker. Jack Bond’s views often matched hers and while every bit as experimental as Arden, he seems to have possessed a key eye for editing that lent itself to giving shape to Arden’s visionary work.

Pain, Rage and Sanity are pushed to extreme limits.
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Jane Arden committed suicide in 1982. Devastated by her death, Jack Bond quickly set out to secure and store all copies of their 3 feature length films and impressive short feature within the vaults of the British Film Institute. He did so with the legal restriction that none could be screened or released. It is easy to imagine most film artists rushing to promote and celebrate their work, but for Jack Bond these films were far too intimate, personal and revelatory. It was not until some 20+ years had passed that one of Jane Arden’s children contacted Jack Bond. It was her youngest son who convinced him to reconsider his infamous decision to lock away the films. It would not be until 2009 that these three films would be screened and another one to two years before BFI could distribute the newly restored prints to DVD/Blu-ray. Even still, this work remains largely lost to American audiences — and a good many Europeans as well. It was only in the last several months that I began to slip into the worlds that Arden-Bond co-created.

A totally unique cinematic language form this disorienting and disturbing psychological thriller…
Anti-Clock
Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1979
Cinematography | Jack Bond (Uncredited)

These films are all available via the British Film Institute on region-free Blu-ray. They can be found on Amazon or BFI‘s own website. If you truly love innovative, challenging and remarkable Film Art — viewing these three films is essential. Each film stands alone, but all three share a common thread of searching for equality, understanding and full formation of identity. The purpose of this blog post is to promote this work so that it can reach the audience who has not yet discovered it.

Transcendental Meditation and Video Experimentation lend toward an attempt to understand self and environment.
VIBRATION
Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1975

I will do my best to not provide spoilers. I will also do my best to restrain my enthusiasm so that this is shorter. I will rely upon more than a couple of images from the work. It is key to note that imagery is of utmost importance to the work of Arden-Bond. But it is also crucial to note that their work was not style over content. The content of these films is rich and urges repeated viewings. These films were made by rebellious thinkers and none fit neatly into categorization.

Separation

London’s Swinging ’60’s is explored with equal amounts of intellectualism, style and unique innovation.
Separation
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography | Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

While Jack Bond is credited as this film’s director, it is clear that Jane Arden was closely involved with almost every aspect of the film. Considered to be one of England’s first truly avant-garde films, Separation is actually a great deal more. Once the viewer adjusts to the film’s often dated but striking innovative method of storytelling, this experimental movie is a highly effective study of a woman falling apart — or away from life.  A middle-aged woman’s emotional and mental crisis results not so much from a failed marriage or poor choices — but from the societal and cultural judgements made against women as they age. Ideas of “reality” and “fantasy” are constantly blurred. Most certainly surreal but never dislodged from logic or realism.

The future, the present and the past all whisper our leading lady further into conflict…
Iain Quarrier, Jane Arden and David de Keyser
Separation
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography| Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

This is as close as Arden-Bond got to “light cinema.” It could be argued that the majority of this film takes place in the female protagonist’s inner self. As viewers we can only ever be certain of her past. Her present and future slip between what feels like cerebral fantasy to an alienated realism. Has she left her husband or has she left what appears to her idea of an out-dated Patriarchal Institution? Has she abandoned her child or has she lost the child? Is this good-looking, young and eagerly hip dude her new lover or imagined? And what of this other women who populate the film’s non-linear storyline?

Forever late or too early…
Jane Arden
Separation
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography| Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

For a film shot on the streets of the ever-styling streets of late 1960’s London, Separation does not look like most of the British films that came out of this period. The editing is never self-conscious or overtly eager to confuse the eye. Procul Harum provide a good deal of the film’s music and Mark Boyle’s celebrated Pop Art lava lamp-like projections jolt the film with sporadic uses of vivid color. Unlike most movies of this era and place, these are not used to trip us out — but almost more to stumble us further into the protagonist’s crisis. Much of the film is filmed in lush black and white.

Groving by force or choice?
Jane Arden
Separation
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography| Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

At turns naturalistic and stiffly artificial, Separation brims over with ideas and theories. Jane Arden’s Feminist Theory has started to take form but is still growing. This is largely a film of questions, doubts and fear. Our character is falling apart, but it is unclear if this is headed toward Nihilism or hope. There is a strong possibility that Jane Arden’s character is not so much falling apart but might have already broken into pieces. She might actually be in the process of reformation from the ruins of oppression and conformity. This magical film is sharply focused toward the struggle of Feminist Equality. It is sometimes sad, but often quite funny. Separation offers more insight than can be caught in one viewing. The film’s power grows with repeated viewings. It is a cinematic work of surprises and insights.

Looking deeper into the self than the viewer might anticipate.
Jane Arden
Separation
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography| Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

In many ways, Separation can be viewed as Jane Arden’s first step into understanding the self from both the intimate and cultural perspectives. She has latched on to the ideas and the importance of Feminism, but is still aching to understand how to grab it without breaking into a million tiny pieces. Jane Arden wrote the film and stars. Jack Bond’s hand as a filmmaker pulls all of it together into a cohesive cinematic work. Truly brilliant and way ahead of its time.

The battle of the sexes takes a darkly comical turn…
Separation
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography | Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

An artistic and Nihilistic study in Feminist Theory takes a truly cinematic dive into a woman’s subconscious. This film is fascinating, intellectual and surprisingly current. Tragically it was given a rather limited release after it was made. It says a great deal that the reputation of this film survived as the movie itself sat on shelves in the dark corner of The British Film Institute‘s vault.  If you like films that make you think and take you to unexpected places, this is not a film to be missed.

A man’s death offers a woman a way out. She put a pretty ribbon on “it”
Separation
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography | Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

Whether Jane Arden’s fictionalized Self is falling together or apart is debatable, but one thing is most certainly clear: she is separating herself from the constraints of her society and culture. She is looking outward for equality and refusal of oppression. She is looking inward for understanding her self and why her identity is so fragmented and torn. Another important element which has already taken form in Arden and Bonds’ philosophy is the teachings and theories of Jacques Lucan. Most correctly called Lucan Theory is most often referred to as The Anti-Therapy Ideology. This rejection of typical Freudian and psychoanalytical thought is certainly hinted at within the frames of Separation. Ideas of symbology, the real, the imaginary and the power of the mirror are present thought the film, but Arden-Bond would soon be pulling their audience full-on into these concepts with their next film.

Symbology, projection, imaginary and real mix to form not only a film, but an entire philosophical approach to the art of filmmaking.
Iain Quarrier, Jane Arden and home movies…
Separation
Jack Bond, 1968
Cinematography| Aubrey Dewar & David Muir

As I’ve already mentioned, Separation was a critical hit at the time of release. Arden-Bond made a film that captured the Counter-Culture and Swinging London of the day but made something far more than a time capsule piece or celebratory work. It could have pushed both forward into the world of cinema, yet neither chose to go in that direction. Instead both continued their mutual and individual personal journeys. It would be over four years before they re-entered the filmmaking world. Arden focused on theatre. Her focus was the thing of legend. Never afraid or shy of controversy or public self-examination that she felt was important for other women as well as men, she wrote, directed and acted in several notorious experimental theatrical productions.

The most important of these were Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven and, most importantly, Holocaust: A New Communion for Freaks, Prophets and Witches. While these plays were carefully scripted, Arden loved collaboration. She encouraged her actors to follow their instincts. Improvisation and audience participation happened. These experimental pieces were controversial and pushed well past the British Theatre boundaries. Yet they were successful. Constantly on the verge of being banned and/or jeered, these performances are as discussed as the work of Joan Littlewood. Yet whereas Littlewood was concerned with finding ways for lost teens of East London to channel their anger, boredom and frustration into art, Arden was deeply and profoundly concerned with pushing forward Feminist Theory.

What is identity?
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Tied up within Lacan Theory as well as her own personal demons she felt and saw reflected back to her from the Self-Mirror, this Feminist work was more focused on shaking off the pain, rage and cruelty of centuries patriarchal oppression. Sexuality was discussed full-on and often turned from sex objectivity to sexual confrontation. Pain and Rage were explored from both the practical and a growing ideology of Arden’s in which she connected the oppression of women directly to colonialism. These two plays would lay the groundwork for a number of important artists and careers. Of the artists, Sheila Allen was become the most prominent. Natasha Morgan would go on to play a crucial role in the British Women’s Liberation Movement and is now a respected and sought-after psychotherapist. Both of these women gave oral histories for BFI at the time that Arden-Bonds’ next film was restored and re-issued. And what a film it is…

The Other Side of the Underneath

Born out of both of her successful experimental theatre pieces, this film was intended to a combination of both plays. Jane Arden wrote the screenplay and insisted that Jack Bond give her full reign as the film’s director. He would go on to participate as cinematographer and “actor.” He would hire David Mingay as the film’s editor. Both Arden and Bond worked closely with Mingay as the film was pulled together. Bond would also take on the responsibility of getting the funding and all the required “items” for filming. These “items” included a brown bear, participation of local Wales coal miners, community members, a band of roaming gypsies, participation of actual mental hospital patients, several mentally/physically challenged individual from government institutions and most famously — Bond would secure a steady supply of LSD. The production of this film is notorious.

Centuries of Cruelty projected on to the face of a bride…
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Most shocking is the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any distortion or untruth in its infamy. The bear would break free and threaten the safety of the tripping cast, the locals would break into fist fights, the mental patient and the mentally retarded would run away. And the actors would trip out. Led by a drunken but self-assured Jane Arden, these trips often took dark turns. She seems to have been able to lead them all through it. The ethics of this film production are most certainly questionable. But this was also what Arden-Bond and friends were after: A deadly pursuit of understanding the pain and rage of the oppressed and repressed.

“Mine! Mine! Mine!”
“She has a pretty face!!!”
Sheila Allen taunts with her human puppet…
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Armed with an endless supply of wine and cigarettes, Jane Arden secured a number of volunteers to appear with her in front of the cameras. Both Sheila Allen and Natasha Morgan were present. The idea was that the entire cast and their director would live “on set” in a decaying old farm house for the duration of the filming. They also agreed to wear their costumes, Victorian Era type nighties, for the duration. Oh, and they also agreed to drop Acid repeatedly throughout all filming. Sheila Allen refused to live on set or to trip out on LSD. Accommodations were made for her to stay at an inn a few miles away. Natasha Morgan was initially hesitant to participate. She agreed to come along as the casts’ cook. However, she changed her mind and joined in. These two actors would figure prominently in the film. Penny Slinger was another actor and activist of import who participated. The lead role was given to an unknown woman who was new to the whole scene, Susanka Fraey. She would end up playing the leading character of the piece.

Susanna Fraey is the Protagonist…
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Sally Minford, a Cellist, and her daughter would also participate. Obviously the child did not receive drugs. And as far as I can tell, Ms. Minford declined to take part in the LSD tripping. However, her role was limited to that of Cellist. She would compose and perform the film’s musical score throughout. Clearly skilled, the musical goal here is not beauty or melody but danger and threat.

I do not view it as a bad thing that I have had to watch Jane Arden’s The Other Side of the Underneath three times before I could form a solid opinion. Quite the contrary, I love the fact that this film’s complexities run so deep that it requires a great deal of thought. There is nothing “easy” about this bold work of film art. This profoundly disturbing film goes places to which I’ve never seen filmed before. Reckless, Dangerous and Bad To Know, this movie rattles more than just cages. This film amps its way from frenzy to hysteria and on to a sort of free-form descent into hippie dystopian vagrancy. The film pulls no punches as it is far too busy bluntly plummeting the subject matter and the cast into a submission of unfettered pain and self-examination. This is a particularly collaborative work and everything in the film depends upon the female cast members who agreed to participate.

The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Decidedly not plot-driven, this film does present us with a protagonist. A young woman “played” by Susanka Fraey is “fished” from a lake where she has attempted suicide. She quickly finds herself in a sort of mental asylum where all the women are dressed in Victorian style nightgowns and roam about freely. Both patients and gate keepers, it almost appears as if this insane asylum is self-contained. Only one person seems to be “in charge” within this madhouse and that is a firm psychiatrist played by Jane Arden herself.

While the film is largely concerned with the Anti-Psychiatry Movement evolved from Jacques Lacan, it is actually far more concerned with the seemingly unbearable rage repressed within the women that takes on an epic level. The strong feeling is that this rage and pain has been individually and universal-shared history of oppression and patriarchal cruelty. Our unnamed protagonist is forever roaming the corridors, hidden spaces and grounds of a madhouse that is truly “mad” and in mortal danger from the pain it all seems to inflict. She along with her fellow inmates are searching through the wreckage of self and shared identity / identities. There is a constant and unrelenting energy conveyed which is full of menace and danger. Nothing feels “acted” and everything we see takes on an importance that is hard to grasp and often even more challenging to watch.

LSD Manipulated to project the deepest pain…
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Sheila Allen serves is a sort of evil Court Jester who uses patients as a puppets and torments everyone with mind-numbing insanity. She also morphs into a Burlesque Stripper From Hell who uses her sexuality and body as a threat instead of an object. Her voice and performance haunt the entire film. This was a long way from The BBC or Harry Potter. Susanna Fraey is almost ever present and carries a great deal of presence on the screen. Possessed with a haunting face and effortless beauty, she is at once victim and victimizer. Penny Slinger gives a particularly potent and oddly focused performance. It is opposite Slinger that we see our protagonist’s as a source of danger.

A Mirror Identity Game to the Death…
Penny Slinger & Susanka Fraey
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Utilizing the Lucan Mirror Theory, the two young women sit opposite each other with large splinters of mirror all around them. What begins as a sort of Identity Game to the death, it is clear that Slinger is intending to murder Fraey, but with a sneak of a tender kiss she is able to throw Slinger off course. Intended killing swept away by tenderness, Fraey had trapped her in her own glass web. Just as the kiss ends, her knife slips into Slinger.

The film is built around a long sequence that is a sort of support group / open therapy. Tripping out on acid and under the guidance of the project built from the stage productions — these women have been led to a place while in mind-expansion mode. The melt-downs are intense, horrific and almost unbearable. It is here that Natasha Morgan’s participation would become most valuable. Her emotional break is at once horrific, painful and almost unbearable. At the same time, it is here that the film presents itself at its most human. Mixing with all of the production challenges, these pseudo group therapy sessions add to the movie’s intention of pure hysteria.

A victim of her own game…
Penny Slinger
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

As these women demonstrate their emotional pain and personal rages/horrors — our protagonist is led into a danger game of mirrors, sexuality, psychic death and crucifixion. Sexuality is explored in various ways. At times the female body is shown as an object for men to rape or harm. Other times it is shown as pleasure born from pain and fear. And then it is also shown as something beautiful, pleasing and erotic. According to the record of production, Arden decided late in the filming to have her lover/collaborator make love to actress, Penny Slinger. Pushing them to extremities, this scene is tender, soft and erotic. Jack Bond’s “character” clearly understands female anatomy and brings pleasure — not threat, rape or pain.

Unscripted, Arden has her lover make love to one of the inmates.
Jack Bond & Penny Slinger
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

As the film amps its way to conclusion, the protagonist’s journey feels more ours than hers. We follow her through a house and landscape of pain, horror and sometimes promise to abject confusion. In the end the question of identity and self-acceptance is tossed onto a dirty cold slab of a floor. Is there to be redemption or healing? More likely it is a struggle that has only just been recognized and has a very long way to go.

As erotic desire is expressed the audience holds its breath only to discover that the male lover understands the woman’s body.
Jack Bond & Penny Slinger
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

Intentionally unpleasant and contradictory, Jane Arden created a film that demands your attention. This is less a movie and more of a cinematic experience. Not for the faint of heart, this is a grim and repulsive study of female identity that refuses to let you go. Strange, darkly comical, surreal, horrifying, raw and truly unforgettable — Jane Arden’s film floats somewhere between Jean-luc Goddard and Ken Russell, but with an entirely different goal in mind. The horrors she and Jack Bond captured are all the more devastating because we realize that beneath the surface — what we see is real.

Going mad…
Sheila Allen
The Other Side of the Underneath
Jane Arden, 1972
Cinematography | Jack Bond & Aubrey Dewar

The next couple of years found Jane Arden and Jack Bond exploring further into the self with use of Transcendental Meditation, Chanting and the aid of Gurus and other mystics. One gets the sense that Jack Bond followed his love on her quest to grapple with her own depression. The result of these mystical exorcises would be put to use in their short film, VIBRATION. To 21st Century eyes, the videography feels grounded and dated. However when one realizes this film was made in 1975, the artistry must be admired.

Jane Arden had developed her own theory regarding the self and coping against repression and anxiety. I will not go into detail, but she called this idea RAT. Essentially the idea was to reject all rational thought. Arden’s life’s journey begin to slip away from Feminism and toward The New Age ideology of Humanism. The problem was that both she and Bond could see how this ideology was not only threatened by a larger control — plans seemed to already be falling into place to control not only individual actions, but our thoughts as well. What might have seemed paranoia rising above the slams of inflation and PUNK, turned out to be somewhat prophetic.

“This is my Anxiety Survival Broadcast ensuring a past future programing. My brain is recreating a negative repeat pattern.”
Sebastian Saville
Anti-Clock
Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1979
Cinematography | Jack Bond (Uncredited)

Keep in mind that the final film made by Arden-Bond was before anyone in England knew about CCTV which would soon be filming almost every human movement in the country.

Anti-Clock

Unlike Separation and The Other Side of the Underneath, Anti-Clock less concerned with Feminist Theory than that of retaining humanity in the face of cultural and societal oppression  as the standpoint for understanding identity. The exploration of Self had culminated toward a Humanist ideology. The central character of this highly experimental “thriller” is a suicidal man played by Arden’s son, Sebastian Saville.

“Life force cannot be controlled by your little brain machine.”
Anti-Clock
Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1979
Cinematography | Jack Bond (Uncredited)

Filmed in London during Great Britain’s dark economic dystopia and the rise of Punk Rock, this film is interestingly disengaged from that history. Even more interesting, is the contradiction that it would be hard to imagine a more “Punk” film. Decidedly more punk than anything Alex Cox or Derek Jarman made at the time, Arden and Bond had not let go of their anger and rebellion against societal and cultural repression, but this film crafted a whole new sort of cinematic language. A linguistically intelligent use of carefully filmed and found video/film material forms something altogether new and unique.

As our suicidal protagonist works toward trying to survive, he is “assisted” by an archetypal psychiatrist (also played by Saville) and a group of scientists, mathematicians and others who rely upon constant video surveillance to monitor his every movement. Most fantastically, they are using these transmissions as connection into his cerebral logic. It is fairly clear that these persons are connected to the government. Less assisting and more studying in an attempt to control their subject, Joseph Sapha. Joseph quickly becomes suspect of these who claim to want to help him. It is particularly chilling that this film was made just a few years prior to the creation of CCTV.

“open your eyes.”
“they are open.”
“then why can’t you see?”
Sebastian Saville
Anti-Clock
Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1979
Cinematography | Jack Bond (Uncredited)

The style/styles of the film may not seem as cutting edge as they must have some 30+ years ago, but this film retains a subversive, disturbing and unsettling impact. It is also still very sharp. It is a film experience to be handled with a careful eye and ear. One missed action of sound and the viewer can become lost in Joseph Sapha’s delima. Watching Anti-Clock is not an easy film. But unlike I anticipated, it is NOT a pretentious work of art. It is a clever manipulation of the medium to convey a story that is not only horrifying but alarming relevant to the 21st Century.

“Thoughts hang around for a very long time. To be precise: forever.”
Sebastian Saville
Anti-Clock
Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1979
Cinematography | Jack Bond (Uncredited)

A sort of Proto-Punk exploration into humanity and a government that dares to study, manipulate and control those who dwell within its borders. Joseph is a young sort of “Every Man” who, like many of us, has had a troubling childhood and life. As this experimental and innovative film pulls us into the video and sound-looped world, the experience is an intellectual, surreal and disorienting jolt to the senses. Slowly the viewer becomes a part of the film’s strange logic. As Joseph grapples with his sexuality, guilt, loneliness and vexing non-purpose in life — the past, present and future are filmed and played discordantly against the idea of order. In a profoundly confused and desperate state of identity crisis, the “help” being offered is not aiming to provide what he anticipates.

But “they” and “he” are all led to a truth that is chilling and unforgettable.

“The patterns inside me were beginning to disconnect. By patterns, I mean those cycles or spirals of thought or behavior which i have been taught to call ‘myself.’ This ‘I’ is simply space. And where the strands of energy costs is a dot. And this dot is the delusion called ‘my identity.'”
Sebastian Saville aims the gun.
Anti-Clock
Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1979
Cinematography | Jack Bond (Uncredited)

NOTE: The BFI disc contains a newly re-edited version of this film by Jack Bond. Bond re-crafted the film in 2005 in an attempt to make the film more clear to modern viewers. Skip this version. Bond does not improve the film or create a more coherent film experience. If anything he saps a great deal of he and Ardens’ exceptional creativity. To be honest, his 2005 re-edit reminds us how crucial Jane Arden was the vision.

This movie may not be everyone’s idea of a thriller, but it is a powerful work of art. Anti-Clock also serves as a fitting end to the Arden-Bond collaboration. These three films form a logic circle of journey to Self. It is a provocative, controversial, difficult, dark and brilliant cinematic journey. It took Jack Bond close to two years to edit the film together. Filmed with various forms of media — largely 1970’s video cameras of different sorts. Very often he applied chemical “treatments” to video footage to gain new and very unique images. These are interlaced with old assembled footage of dictators, monarchs, war, propaganda and a constantly unrelenting manner of sound editing.

“There is a continuum which links all living things together so that the smallest cell does not pulsate without its effect being felt in the furtherest reaches of the solar system. So, everything being one is not some romantic ideal, but an indisputable scientific reality. When this information seeps into our consciousness, it must change the moral structure of society and destroy the value system of the rational world.”
Anti-Clock
Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1979
Cinematography | Jack Bond (Uncredited)

The look of this film remains oddly potent and totally unique in the way it has been assembled. This odd and disturbing film was championed in 1979 as a brilliant psychological thriller. However, it only played in a few cities in the US and a very brief run in London. It also served as a connector to French Film Master, Claude Chabrol, with whom Arden was to work. By the time the film opened Jack Bond and Jane Arden had ended their relationship. It might have seemed that Jack Bond was lost while Jane Arden was on her way to a new artistic vision in France. This was not the case.

Jane Arden would take her own life in December of 1982 at the age of 55. Jack Bond would go on to work as a documentarian for the BBC. He remains an artist of note in Great Britain.

Anti-Clock Jane Arden & Jack Bond, 1979 Cinematography | Jack Bond (Uncredited)

The film work they co-created remains vital, powerful and very much alive.

Matty Stanfield, 12.30.2015

FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

I was well acquainted with Jason Banker’s fist film, Toad Road. I love his first film. If you have not seen it, seek it out. Toad Road is streaming via Netflix and AmazonPrime. So I was excited when I had a rare opportunity to see his second and latest movie, Felt, last year. At that time Felt had only had two official screenings. I had no idea regarding the subject of the film when I first saw it.  Felt was so such a jolt of the senses my jaw had fallen leaving my mouth open in a mixed state of awe, confusion and shock. I knew I liked Banker’s new film, but it filled my head with so many ideas, challenged my personal ideas of cinematic reality and was deeply unsettled. I was unable to form a clear opinion to write anything that would matter. This didn’t thrill the individuals who had asked me to write a summary and review. As promotion for the film began I avoided reading any reviews or much in the way of commentary. Aside from a couple of interviews with Jason Banker, I only watched the two trailers.

It would be June of 2015  before Felt would reach San Francisco’s Roxy Cinema. I do not enjoy The Roxy. I’m sorry. I just don’t like seeing movies there.

The Roxy Movie Theatre is a historical building. It is actually the second oldest continuously operating movie theater in the country. The Roxy is an odd experience within and of itself. No matter how hard the owners and the city have tried, years of decay have created an odd atmosphere. There are two screens. One of the screens is sort of disconnected from the other. It almost feels like an after thought from the late 1970’s or the early 1980’s. I’ve never had an enjoyable viewing experience there. I think this is because of all our cinemas, The Roxy tends to attract all groups of The San Francisco Cinematic Audience under one roof.   The San Francisco Cinematic Audience can be a strange mix and one is most likely to encounter it at The Roxy. Situated in the prime real estate of The Mission it is a natural magnet. I break down the SF Cinematic Audience into 3 stereo types:  Hardcore Film Art Cinephiles, SF Hipsters and Fringe Art Eccentrics. Reactions and interactions tend to be “extreme” or “muted dissonance” —  you never quite know what to expect. The one thing you can expect if you see a intense, controversial or polarizing work of art at The Roxy you can anticipate debates and even arguments as you make your way back to Mission Street.

As an example, I attended a screening of Christophe Honoré controversial 2004 film, Ma Mere, at The Roxy.

Ma Mere
Isabelle Huppert
Christophe Honoré, 2005

It was not even a new film. I has seen several years earlier at another old cinema which is now long gone and forgotten. Ma Mere is a challenging and polarizing movie on its own without the added projection of our SF Audience baggage. The theatre was not full. The audience seemed to have an equal number of men to women. All of my Roxy stereotypes were present. Cinephiles, Hipsters and Eccentrics were sharing the space.  The entire audience sat in silence as the credits rolled. I was ready to leave, but I didn’t want to be lectured. So I sat. No one stood up or shuffled in their seats. It was total silence. And then it happened. A long and exaggerated “hiss” was aimed at the screen. Then two more “hissers” joined in.

This is the dreaded San Francisco Hiss. A prime example of our city’s strange sense of entitlement that often “requires” the SF individual to feel the need to hiss at movies, performers or artists if their viewpoints do not align with his/her own. It is as annoying as it is funny. But make no mistake, The San Francisco Hiss is quite serious in intend. It carries more impact here than a “Boo” or a tossed cup. The tricky thing about The San Francisco Hiss is that it tends to set off a chain reaction of one sort or another. I often feel like my fellow citizens feel that his/her own individual opinion is far more important than any other. All one needs to do is ride a MUNI bus from the beach to Union Square to see these clashing “entitlements” go to battle. This often evolves into full-on-rage fueled rants. Inevitably someone is asked to exit the bus. The bus driver must firmly stand his/her ground. The bus stops. It will not move until the one or two individuals who have gone too far step out. Traffic jam ensues. Everyone is late.

Welcome to The New French Extreme
Ma Mere
Louis Garrel and Isabell Huppert
Christophe Honoré, 2004

As one would expect this “hiss” aimed at Ma Mere created anger toward the hissers. By the time the lights came up a highly encaged debate was in full tilt boogie. The hissers were  white male hipsters. Of the five annoyed hiss protestors were two females of the Cinephile type, one male of the Team Eccentric and the other was a woman of the Hipster variety. It was the only screening of the day. I sat and listened in. And I took notes.

“You’ve no right to ruin the experience for the rest of us!’

“Dude! It was the credits!”

“This is an important film! You are both too ignorant to understand it!”

“Oh I think we know pornography when we see it!”

“Fuck you!”

“No Fuck you!”

At this point it was best to quietly walk past them as the poor Manager (of Team Cinephile) was about to attempt to guide the argument out to The Mission. I’m sure everyone made it out fine. It is just the way it tends to be when you go to The Roxy. Especially if it is the last evening screening.

If Ma Mere is polarizing, I’m not sure where this would leave Felt. Jason Banker’s film is beyond “polarizing” — it is an intentional and intense provocation. I decided I would never get to see Felt on a big screen.

I made the right decision. A pal emailed me of his experience at The Roxy after watching Felt. The film profoundly disturbed him. The mixture of hissing and shhh’ing made him leave before the credits were done. As he walked back out to the reality of Mission Street, he noticed three women gathered together discussing the movie. I asked him of which “group” they were members. He was not sure, but he guessed they were fellow Art House Cinephiles. Because of the nature of the film he had just seen he was hesitant to approach these three women who were all hugging themselves. He guessed that all three women were probably somewhere between the ages of 24 and 28. He was most definitely sure that all three of these women were intelligent, cool and “casually” beautiful. My friend put his hands deep into his hoodie’s pockets and asked, “So, how do you all feel about ‘Felt‘?”

Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

Luckily none were offended. He told them about a friend of his having already seen Felt (that would be me) and that I had yet to be able to articulate an opinion. All three women agreed. Felt had left them with a great many mixed emotions. As he prepared to walk away one of the women volunteered, “It’s so weird I hardly ever allow myself to think about it. But I’m always so uncomfortable when I’m in a room with more than a few men.” The other two women nodded in agreement, but none could articulate why. He agreed and mentioned that he got a sense of that feeling in the movie, but he couldn’t find the words. No wanting to seem “lame” he said he thought the movie offered a lot of ideas but didn’t clearly answer why women feel so threatened by men. Mistake.

He wished them a good evening and started walking away and the more assertive of the women called out to him, “Actually, it was in that movie.” The reason is actually very clear in Jason Banker’s movie.

Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

Felt became available for purchase as VOD via iTunes this week. I bought a copy and watched it again.

I hit the Internet and read opinion from Film Critics, fellow bloggers, Letterbox and the fun world of IMDB user postings. Film critics are divided when it comes to Felt. What I find interesting about The Film Critic Response is the information one discovers by reading between their lines. The majority of the reviews seem to be afraid to either fully dismiss or fully praise Felt.

Ben Kenigsberg’s New York Times review stuck me as being particularly off-mark. Due to The Times recent policy change related to which films are reviewed, it says a lot that they opted to even review Felt. Their current logic in what films they will review and which films they will not review is more than a little confused, but I am impressed that Felt was considered.

Amy Everson
Super Hero?
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

Kenigsberg summed up Felt, “Reading about the filmmakers’ intentions is more rewarding than watching the results.”  Meaning that The New York Times “felt” that Felt‘s cinematic intention had to be praised, but this critic seemed to need to find something about Jason Banker’s movie that would allow him not to praise the over-all result. I write this because Kenigsberg’s deconstruction of Felt feels almost painfully weak. He assigns a generally unfavorable review by taking aim at Banker’s “ambiguities.” Mr. Kenigsberg  even goes so far as to challenge the title of the film. He expressed confusion about whether he should view the title as a noun or a verb. The title is no riddle. There is nothing “ambiguous” about it. A sixth grade child would be able to understand that the title of this movie is intentionally both a noun and a verb. Felt is filled with ambiguities. The title is not one of them. Felt‘s ambiguities are intentional. Even if an individual dislikes the film, he/she will note the the “ambiguities” are a major reason that the film holds interest. The “unstated” within Banker’s Felt is what makes it a true cinematic experience.

As I read Ben Kenigsberg’s review two points emerged:

1. It is not the ambiguity that bothers him, his real issue is the uncomfortable cultural statement Felt asserts.

2. He doesn’t care for Amy Everson’s artwork. He actually seems to hate it. It disturbs him.

Everything about Jason Banker’s Felt is intended to unsettle, uncomforted, disturb and it requires both women and men to think about the ways in which we play into a system not of our own design. What the film presents is not a new problem. It is both a cultural and societal issue that has become so deeply entrenched that a jolt is needed to wake people up. I’m not trying to state that a movie is going to change anything, but this film just might be a catalyst for many to reconsider how they interact with the opposite sex.

Please note: I’ve nothing against Ben Kenigssberg. I think he is a sound, educated and professional Film Critic. His intelligence shines, but if he dislikes Felt he has failed to actually defend his position. I wanted to highlight his review because he is a member of a team of film critics who I admire. Unfortunately, he is one of many who have chosen to take the “safest” route to disregard this film. Most of these “safe-routed” dismissals fail to point out any credible reason to dislike the film. In fact the majority of bad reviews are not hinged on any real merit.

Only a handful of the bad reviews took a firm ground.

A Borrowed Gender
Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

Marjorie Baumgarten of The Austin Chronicle is reasonable in her dismissal of Felt. While she has no problem admitting to the film’s intended provocation and import of ideas, she found the movie to be stylized in a manner too obvious for her taste. There were also a couple of Film Critics who saw the potential of a great film, but disliked Jason Banker’s choice of improvisational dialogue. I don’t agree with either viewpoints, but I can understand these opinions. This is logical film criticism. It is also the sort of criticism that often met John Cassavetes. None of his films were actually “improvised” but they all felt like it. And Cassavetes never “rushed” the pace of a movie. Many critics disliked a great deal of his work. But those who were brave enough to embrace it bear out the winners in Film Theory. You would be hard pressed to find a Film Critic who would trash a Cassavetes film now. Robert Altman also received a number of negative reviews in his day for many of the same reasons.

Film Critic, Jenni Miller of A/V Club gave Felt a positive review. Her summation is that Jason Banker’s movie might be a little too close to the bone to enjoy, but this is outweighed by the significance of what is being conveyed. Miller doesn’t need to “enjoy” a movie to see its value. When she writes that Felt “sneaks up on you and lingers…”

Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

she is able to state the power of the film. In the end she assigns a “B” rating, but it seems given with a firm warning that this was no fun for her — and it may be equally un-fun for you.

Of the few truly positive reviews Felt received, The Village Voice‘s Diana Clarke actually formulates her words in the way I so wish I could formulate my own.

Her review can be found here: http://www.villagevoice.com/film/in-daring-indie-felt-a-young-woman-seizes-rich-dudes-masculinity-7290019

Andrew O’Hehir of Salan.com is one of the few critics who liked the film. He clearly put some thought into what he wrote. Of course, this is his job. He also makes a potent reference to recent mainstream movies that almost seem to celebrate Rape Culture. Like Ted 2. I was particularly impressed when I saw that Rotten Tomatoes chose this O’Hehir quote: “Some viewers will no doubt find “Felt” maddening because it never answers seemingly crucial plot questions that a normal movie or TV show would feel compelled to clear up. That ambiguity is precisely the source of its power, and its cinematic quality.”

Ben Kenigssberg, can you hear Andrew O’Hehir? This is Film Theory 101. Ouch. Maybe I am picking on Ben. I’m sorry.

If any of the Film Critics I know happen to read this, please start assigning a rating to your reviews. It sucks, but this is now a full world of Film by Consensus. Rotten Tomatoes is assigning their own rating to many of your reviews. And they are not accurate most of the time. Take head of The New York Times and A/V Club. Do not let RT decide the rating of your review.

Playing with fire…
Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

The most disturbing thing I noticed regarding The Public Reaction was the number of women who were angered by not only Banker’s film but by the idea of Feminism itself. There are a lot of women out there who view Amy Everson as the enemy. This caught me off guard. It doesn’t surprise me that a number of “dudes” out there hate the movie. It would also not surprise me if a good number of women disliked it. Art is subjective. And Film Art this provocative is not always going to win everyone’s heart. But I am shocked at the level of female anger toward Feminism. I don’t get it. But then, I am puzzled by hate in general. It is so very extreme. The level of hate “out there” is staggering, but the level of misogyny and self-loathing is even more horrifying.

Jason Banker, the filmmaker who made the most out of a tragic and senseless tragedy into a surrealistic experimental horror film we know to be Toad Road, has now matured into a far more self-assured Film Artist. A potent Cinematographer as well, Banker brings a great deal of talent to the table. Felt came about thanks to accidental meeting between Amy Everson and Banker. During a visit to San Francisco, Everson caught Banker’s attention because of her playful yet aggressive demeanor — and the fact that she was running around the city in one of her provocative costumes.  As I understand it, Everson showed her artwork to Banker. The work he first saw was all contained in her bedroom. A hybrid of “Sesame Street” kitsch intertwined with sex toys, phallic symbols, dildos, vaginas, assholes and soft doll-like re-enactments of menace. All or much of the work utilizing felt as a key media. Amy Everson is brilliantly talented, fearless and a provocateur. Even the seemingly most innocent creation achieves a vaguely erotic danger.

Art by Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

Her work is often tinged with a twisted sort of humor and some of it is just deeply disturbing.

Although, I share my life with a San Francisco artist and know a good many, I’ve only heard/read her name a couple of times. There is a whole other aspect to her work which incorporates Performance Art with her costume creations. Jason Banker was equally impressed as he was disturbed. It was from this jumping point that the two artists began to collaborate toward what would become Felt.

Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

If you are interested in Amy Everson’s art, a link to her website is below. She is a completely unique and important voice. Check it out, but please don’t “flame” her. It takes a whole lot of guts to lay your soul out for all to see. As I look at her work, it seems to me she is sharing some very intensely intimate glimpses into her being. I’m sure the recent release of Felt has been more than a bit challenging. Though, I hope it has been rewarding.

http://www.amyeverson.com

And now, my opinion/review for Felt:

Jason Banker’s film begins with a painfully thin young adult woman who appears to have fallen into a deep depression. We first hear her voice in the form of narration. Her voice sounds a bit like “a little girl” yet what her voice delivers is a firm thud of certainty  “My life is a fucking nightmare.” BAM! It is this line that propels us forward into not only into the film, but her mind.

Amy Everson is more than the film’s lead actor. She also shares “co-writing” credit with Jason Banker.  And she is doing more than playing a character, the film’s core ideas are based not only on her artwork, but certain aspects of her  personality. Amy Everson is playing a “fictionalized” version of herself. While it is sometimes clear she is not a trained actor, she carries a great deal of charisma. You want to watch and understand this character. You want to try and like her.

“My life is a fucking nightmare.”
Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

Felt‘s Amy has survived some form of sexual abuse. The actual abuse is never stated or confirmed, but it seems obvious. Her friends want to help her, but are growing weary of her artistic and creative coping skills. Not only have these coping skills become isolating, they seem to have opened some dark portal into which she falling. These pieces of art and the costumes she creates are disturbing, provocative and somehow menacing and they are fusing into her identity. She has become dazed, lonely and nihilistically numb. Amy’s costumes allowed her to access inner-strength. Their designed to not only give her a sense of worth and purpose, it feels as if they were initially conceived to act as healing tools with which she might be able to push away her fears of men.

“Amy” has found a way to funnel her anger and fears through her art. But now, these subversively-twisted anatomically-“correct” costumes offer no comfort. By the time we enter her story what were once empowering tools for healing have turned against her as well as against others. She has taken on an inappropriate role of “protector” for her friends from the men in their lives. Her artistic expression of comfort are turning into a weapon. Her isolation within these “armors” made of felt and other materials is starting to fuel a fantastical idea which is taking over her reality. She has taken to wearing her costumes beneath her street clothing. She wanders off into private corners of nature within the Bay Area and Redwood forests where she can strip down and assert her power with a wooden sword. While on a walk with a girlfriend, the friend tries to encage Amy in a conversation about her friends’ concerns.

“You have to be very delicate…”
Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

But Amy has already put on her mask and just as quickly has unzipped her pants to brandish her swollen plastic penis. Her friend tries to reason with Amy to no avail. All her friend can do is force her keep her clothes before she can make a break and run away. Before she rushes off Amy shares an alarmingly sincere desire for the two of them to become “Super Heroes” committed on seeking vengeance against all the predators society calls men.

Jason Banker is very careful to limit the information we receive and how we receive it. At times Felt may not be “linear.” Other times it could be argued that what we see may only be within the confines of Amy’s damaged psyche.  This is not a flaw. This is a smart move on Banker’s part. It allows the audience to form individual conclusions and to assess the situations as they unfold. We see Amy in several scenes with single men of her own age. In one scene she is alone with an ill-advised OKCupid Match-Up from Hell. Other scenes she shares these experiences with her girlfriends. These scenes of interaction with ‘normal’ men feel so real it almost hurts to watch. Each interaction reveals aspects of male behavior about, toward and with women that we might not always pick up were it not for Banker’s camera. The truth is these scenes feel “real” and it is alarming to note the way the men attempt to manipulate, control and harass the women. What might feel “normal” is now unsettling. The men Amy meets are dismissive, aggressive, inappropriate and passively menacing. If there is even an initial “friendliness,” it quickly feels false.

Is this hope?
Amy Everson / Kentucker Audley
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

In another scene she meets her best friend’s new boyfriend. Amy is nervous and is unable to adequately hid her insecurity. Her friend’s boyfriend immediately chooses to make fun of her and insinuates that she is nothing more than a spoiled entitled bitch. A few minutes later the boyfriend is pissed as Amy’s girlfriend chides him for being mean to her best friend. His response is in the form of humor. He disagrees. He wants to know why his girlfriend is friends with such a “freak” and he teasingly wraps his hand around her neck warning her to not to hang out crazy “bitches.” Amy immediately attempts to attack him for threatening her friend. This new boyfriend chooses to meet her aggression with an even stronger level of anger and threat. To him, Amy is a “crazy bitch” and he informs her that just because she is a “girl” will not prevent him from taking her down.

Later, her girlfriends sit down with her. One attempts to “lay hands” on her with a prayer for healing. Once again they try to reason her to understand that these men are “not all that bad” — they just want sex. But the hope is that they might want more down the road. Their intervention backfires on them as Amy stays calm and points out the obvious. Her girlfriends seem to be “aware” of the cruel, debasing and threatening attitude. It appears it is easier to just “accept” this cultural misogyny. Amy’s more well-adjusted and functioning friends have and are assimilating into “Rape Culture.”

Kentucker Audley plays “Kenny.” Kenny’s arrival into Amy’s life comes with tenderness, understanding and concern. He comforts her. He cares about her. He is able to show that he is impressed with her art while also expressing sadness for whatever pain life has given her. Kenny never does this in a patronizing way. He truly appreciates her artistry and her.  When she speaks to him he actually listens. Eventually, Amy is not threatened by Kenny. She seems to be healing as she discovers that she can be herself with him and he offers no judgement. He offers no threat. Kenny seems to offer only love.

Amy Everson and Kentucker Audley
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

It is never clear if Amy and Kenny have consummated their relationship. Just as it seems we might be given this information regarding their romance, we discover that Kenny is not what he seems. It is unclear, but he has not been deceptive with Amy. When he attempts to open up and discuss this deception, it is too late.  Amy’s discovery of Kenny’s “deception” alters not only her perception of him. It seems to send her off-the-rails of sanity. And everything Amy shifts. Every little gesture seems to convey something different than before. We see everything about her change.

As she leads the audience into an act of horrific violence, it is not a surprise. Everything seems to be pointing to something horrible, but witnessing it is profoundly unsettling.

Playing ‘Dress Up’
Amy Everson / Kentucker Audley
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

Jason Banker’s film leaves the audience in a state of shock that is not scary. It is far more serious. We are left adrift in Amy’s madness. The “victim” has become an even worse “victimizer.” It brings us back to a scene in which she explains to Kenny that most forms of rape “are perpetuated by people you know and trust.”

There is no way Kenny would have interpreted Amy’s comment as a warning. It might not have even been clear to her.  Amy’s decision is not rational. It is insane.

Provocative, disturbing, challenging, oddly beautiful and repulsively ugly, Felt is one of the clearest articulations of our culture’s continuing escalation of violence against women. “Rape Culture” is not some “hip” catch-phrase. It is a sad reality in which many of us play without even realizing. Jason Banker has crafted a firm depiction of cultural misogyny that never seems to wain. He has done so within the framework of Art Horror. The artistic mastery of this film can’t be denied.

Into the woods…
Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

The implications of Felt‘s result leave us with one question:

How does a sexual assault victim heal in a world that almost seems to support the assault?

Amy Everson
FELT
Jason Banker, 2015

And for those who thought Jason Banker’s feature film directorial debut, Toad Road, was an accident or a “one hit” cinematic wonder, Felt blows any doubt of possessing an important cinematic filmmaker out the window.  This Film Artist is not limited in his scope of obtaining  understanding from more than one perspective. This is a filmmaker to watch.

matty stanfield, 7.22.2015

By 1995 Communist Poland was long gone. The state no longer restricted the artist or oppressed it’s people. Capitalism was to be embraced. Along with this sudden shift in economy and freedom came many challenges. For the Film Artist, there seemed to be a freedom. A cinema without restriction.

In reality, the entire Polish infrastructure was unstable. The state no longer funded the arts. Film had to be funded privately. However, there was no real film studio or film producers wiling to fund much beyond silly comedies, biographies and other projects that criticized the former Communist regime. When Andrzej Zulawski returned to Poland to film Szamanka (She-Shaman), he had to secure funding from France and Switzerland in order to bring his vision to the screen.

Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Art | Jean-Philippe Guigou

Those of you reading this most likely know who Andrzej Zulawski is, but despite his genius and success he remains a largely marginalized film artist. Best known and accepted in France, he obtained some degree of success there. In the US and the UK he is best known for leading Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neil into the dark, disturbing, twisted and innovative cult film, Possession. If that controversial and infamous 1981 film is his most personal work, where does that place Szamanka?

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

This might be one of his more philosophical films, but it is unquestionably his most sexually obsessed film. Looking at the movie from a strictly surface perspective (a mistake when it comes to the films of Andrzej Zulawski) this could be interpreted as a frantically impulsive sexual relationship between a wounded and angry Anthropologist and a clearly disturbed young woman. A sort of demented take on the battle of the sexes. However, this is far too simplistic a way to watch or understand this erotic film that hinges on apocalyptic horror.

Passion, love, madness or taming evil?
Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

If you’ve not heard of Szamanka or seen it, it is likely due to the fact that upon its release it faced an incredible amount of rage from the Polish Catholic Church. Censorship by the State of Poland may have ended, but a new form of repression had sprung up in the form of Post-Communist Catholic Poland. This tale derived from the ideas of Polish writer, Stanislaw Przybyszewski and his controversial coining of the phrase, Naked Soul and Zulawskis’s desire to wake up the Polish masses with his own sort of “Santanic Antidote” to his two contemporaries of Polish Cinema. While both Kieslowski Krzysztof and Zanussi Krzysztof were both brilliant filmmakers, from the ideology of Zulawski were playing into some spiritual idea to which he took exception.

Who is the Sadist? Who is the Masochist? Or, is this demonic possession?
Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Filled with contradictory ideas around Catholicism, good, evil, sexuality and love this film faced a whole new level of censorship that Zulawski had never faced. Communist Rule was tough, but the unbridled adherence of Religion truly knows no bounds. The film is so graphic sexually that it probably would have been banned anyway, but the controversial ideas of this philosophical, mystical and erotic journey remain blasphemous. The Polish community almost immediately began to call this film The Last Tango in Warsaw. Even though they had not seen it, this was and remains the oft-mentioned joke about Szamanka.

The film has been compared to Lars von Trier’s controversial, Antichrist, in that it depicts a male who suffers the wrath and sexual rage of his female wife. Antichrist plays with ideas around cultural misogyny and grief in equal measure. Like Lars von Trier, Zulawski has been accused of misogyny. The problem with this accusation is that it doesn’t hold up when one watches Szamanka with some knowledge of where it’s maker is coming from and where the film ultimately takes us. It is also important to note that the screenplay was written by Manuela Gretkowska, a young Feminist and acclaimed writer who played a key role in founding The Polish Women’s Party. Certainly Andrzej Zulawski pushes forward his own agenda, but he never veered far from Gretkowska’s script.

Rumors that this was real and not simulated sex has earned the film the nickname of “The Last Tango in Warsaw”
Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Boguslaw Linda was an established Polish movie star when he was cast as Michal, the unhappy and profoundly conflicted anthropologist who has just come into the job of investigating the rarest of anthropological finds. There are more than a few stories about the casting of the female lead. Zulawski was not known to work with “unknowns” or “untrained” actors, but something about Iwona Petry’s beauty and presence deeply fascinated Zulawski. She was just barely twenty years of age when he saw her ordering a cup of coffee. Described as a bit eccentric and a strict vegetarian, Zulawski convinced her that she was meant to be his star and to play the role of Wloszka / The Italian.

An unforgettable cinematic presence and debut which would be her final turn in front of film cameras.
Iwona Petry as Wloszka AKA “The Italian”
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

While Szamanka was a huge critical and commercial failure in Poland — largely because the Polish Catholic Church. Honestly, the film was never even given a chance to screen much at all due to protests and the ultimate banning of the film. However the film scored incredibly well in Italy and France. It was expected that Petry would be a major and perhaps first true Polish female movie star. She didn’t. In fact she has become a huge part of this movie’s infamy. During production the Polish media had a frenzy in reporting that Zulawski was manipulating, forcing and abusing the young woman. Rumors ranged from beatings to forced sex to psychological torture.

Looking back at the situation, it would seem that Zulawski’s dark sense of humor had some fun playing with what were clearly rumors. When the film finally screened to great acclaim at the 1996 Venice Film Festival, Zulawski answered the charges with his typical blunt intellect. There was no truth to any of it. Yet another ploy to set the film up by the oppressive Polish Catholic Church.

Religious symbology and Mysticism loom constantly around these two rage-filled lovers.
Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

However, Iwona Petry failed to show up for the premiere. She actually went missing for a short while. Apparently exhausted from the tough shoot and terrified by the media attention she took her money and ran off to India. In 1998 she gave a few interviews and admitted that the sudden brush with fame was far more than she had bargained. A roll of eyes to the rumors that continue in Poland to present day. She returned to university and is now a published fiction writer. She has no interest in returning to the world of acting.

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

This is a shame as her performance in the film is quite impressive. Iwona Petry had the presence of a movie star and she played the role of the She-Shamen with an almost insane level of erotic energy. One hardly has time to notice the well-trained middle-aged Boguslaw Linda. When Petry is on screen, it is she you watch. And, no. She is not nude the entire time. It is an interesting and terrifying performance. Once you see this odd film, you will never forget her.

Most importantly, you will never forget Szamanka.

The anthropological find of a lifetime: a nude mummified Shaman covered in mystical tattoos and a pouch of ancient hallucinogenic mushrooms
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Boguslaw Linda’s Michal is a frustrated scientist about to marry a woman for whom he feels no love or passion. During an unseen excavation with his students, a mummy is discovered. It is determined that this mummy is close to 2,000 years old. Michal’s interest in this mummy goes far beyond the academic or scientific when he discovers this is the body of a Shaman.

Touching, connecting and trying to merge with God
Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

The body is incredibly well preserved. Covered in mystical tattoos, they also find a pouch full of what turns out to be  hallucinogenic mushrooms. While Michal and his team try desperately to understand the cause of the Shaman’s death, there is only one clue: the back of the Shaman’s skull is crushed. This does not signal the cause of death but an ancient pagan ritual in which after death, the Shaman’s skull is opened to release the potent spirit free.

Andrzej Jaroszewicz’s camera seems to be drawn to offering us views of the Shaman’s rather pronounced penis. And Michal is unable to hold back. He breaks protocol and touches the Shaman with his bare hands. Clearly there is a sense of connection for Michal, but the reason for this is not entirely clear to us or him. It is as if he wants to find a way to truly connect with this ancient dead being. This need verges toward the sexual.

What secrets and powers are hidden in the Shaman mummy?
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

The Anthropologist and his mummy are a a constant subplot of the film. The main interest is on the strange young woman who captures the lustful attentions of the scientist almost as strongly as the mystical-pull of the Shaman. A rude and socially inept, but beautiful woman. We first see Petry’s The Italian as she lunges and plunges her way along a buffet of food which she shovels into her mouth and down her throat as if her hunger can never be satisfied.

Erotic desire beyond reason…
Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

She is to rent an apartment owned by Michal. The modest flat was formerly occupied by his brother. The Italian wants the apartment. The deal is done, but signed with a frantic and brutal sort of sex that feels as angry as lust-driven. Like the mummy, Michal seems to want to somehow merge more into this beautiful girl than sexual penetration will allow. And like with her food, The Italian’s erotic desire seems to be unhinged and impossible to satisfy.

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Between the ever-mounting frenzied levels of brute force, kink, domination, submission, pain and pleasure, Michal attempts to communicate with this woman of his sexual dreams. She, however, seems more concerned with her consuming passion and seeks more to “commune” than communicate. She is obsessed with him and seems to ache to form a possession of his desires. Not articulate, but psychical in her nature.

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Michal is becoming more and more obsessed with her. He attempts to discuss philosophy with her but to not ready interest. He discusses religion with disdain. Here she seems a bit more interested, but it always comes down to sex. Our Anthropologist suspects his fever-pitched lover might be no more than a beautiful idiot. The Italian seems unable to offer him nothing more than hot sex. He wants more.

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

“You see, that’s why there are common saints, just God’s morons with a soul. No brains.”

This sort of comment seems to cause a pulse within the ever-sexually-rabid woman. And as hard as Michal seems to want to walk away from her, he simply can’t. She mystifies him. Occupies his thoughts. Drives him to rage-fueled sexual encounters. The sex becomes desperate. Yet for her, the sex is almost magical. A sort of erotic ritual.

Michal watches his sleeping lover. Or is she something less or more?
Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

He finds himself more miserable with her than he had been with his loveless marriage potential. The mummy no longer holds the power over him. This crude, intolerant, polymorphously perverse, tyrannical and hysterical woman seems to offer an inexplicable power over him.

This is not just unrestrained passion, this is something sinister.

Or is it possibly something that offers our Anthropologist a meaning to his existentially challenged existence. He no longer fits in. Poland offers opportunity, but it seems a false promise. His mummy holds no answers. But there seems to be something bleakly powerful in these cruel sexual encounters. The Italian becomes transformed. Already beautiful, during sex she seems to become transformed to the level of sexual goddess. But the orgasm appears to be more like gasoline tossed on some spiritual fire.

There is no pay off or hope in this sex.

Defile.
Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

And as this deeply odd but impossibly fascinating Art House film pulls us deep into this mire of confusion, identity crisis, sexual obsessions, perversions and religious conflict. It is also as the film enters it’s third and final act that Zulawski and Manuela Gretkowska push us into the dark theatrical thinking of Stanislaw Przybyszewski and his outright Satanic symbolism.

For Przybyszewski there is no such thing as “love,” it is nothing but a magical illusion. When Michal meets The Italian he his helpless. There can be no free will here. Michal cannot turn away from his She-Shamen even when he seems to realize this girl’s insanity is something of a mystical and most-likely demonic nature. He is rendered to the state of the somnambulistic when it comes to this darkly magik lover who seems to have access to fully influence him to the very core of his being. This “love” is truly apocalyptic. It does not seem to matter if the She-Shaman influences for good or evil. If her ritualistic sex is served for healing or wounding. For Michal has no choice in the matter.

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

And, here is the clear separation from the Nihilistic turn of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist. Unlike the husband in that film, Michal is not meeting a mere symbol of angry female energy oppressed by centuries of human cruelty, Michal has fallen prey to a demonic sort of force. He is nothing more than a sort of life-force for the She-Shaman. He is one of those common saints. He has been deceived. His nothing more than brains for the She-Shaman‘s food.

As Stanislaw Przybyszewski might have appraised it, for this man survival is not an option. He must submit to the illusion and power of love. In a strange way, this intellectual is taking part in a consensual murder. In this odd bit of socially conscious cinema, everything is fucked.

God, Faith, Spirituality, and Hope looks down…
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Without love. Without hope. Szamanka must be satisfied.

Even to write about this true cinematic anomaly makes one feel a little loopy. By the time Andrzej Zulawski’s grim film comes to it’s conclusion the viewer is left spent and more than a little dazed.

The folks at Mondo Vision have done an outstanding job at restoring this deeply weird but exceptional film. Sadly, there are no plans to issue it to VOD or Blu-Ray format. It is only available from them on region free DVD. But they have loaded it with extras. If you’ve an interest in Eastern European cinema or the work of Andrzej Zulawski, you really can’t afford to miss it.

You can find it, and several of Zulawski’s titles here: http://www.mondo-vision.com/szamanka.php

Matty Stanfield, 9.15.2015

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Iwona Petry & Boguslaw Linda
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

God, Faith, Spirituality, and Hope looks down…
Szamanka
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

“I shall tell of another adventure that is all the more strange...” — Witold Gombrowicz, 1965

A film by Andrzej Zulawski
Victoria Guerra
Cosmos
Andrzej Zulawski, 2015
Cinematography | Andre Szankowski

This sentence was more or less lost in a late 1960’s translation of Kosmos. Sadly it would be that sentence that served not only as my introduction to a novel but to the Polish writer. Memory is a funny thing. While I forgotten most of the novel, it is that first sentence that stayed forever branded into my mind. I decided I needed to revisit  When I learned that Andrzej Zulawski was about to shoot a film adapted from Witold Gombrowicz’s Kosmos, I decided to refresh my memory beyond a single sentence. I expected to be confused as I did remember it had been clunky regarding translation. I was excited to discover that the novel that had been warded the 1967 Prix Formentor Award for literature had been re-translated from Polish into English. Yale University Press published Danuta Borchardt’s new translation of Gombrowicz since I had last thought of it.

Kosmos
Witold Gombrowicz, 1965

Witold Gombrowicz has always interested me. While he was a fiction writer he is equally known as a diarist. Where does his fiction merge into his reality and experience? How does the English reader know he/she is able to understand his prose’s complexity? German and French readers had better access to his work thanks to more accurate translations. My introduction to his work came with an understanding that he had to firmly defend his most popular work, Ferdydurke, from critics who felt it was satire. Satire had not been Gombrowicz’s purpose. His novels are known for exploring issues of identity and existentialism under the pressures of Nationalism and fast social change. But these explorations were made with a sense absurdity that tied closely to dark humor.

His characters are not fully developed. Their identities are fragmented by the repression, oppression and tyranny imposed by both culture and society. These characters roam about trying to formulate understanding of self/life under the strain and disturbing acts that forever alter the circumstances of being. And while there is a grim level of pessimism that leans against established institutional rule — Gombrowicz disagreed that his work was connected with nihilism, but the darkness is most definitely waiting.

Translated from Polish to German into French and fused into English. Witold Gombrowicz’s often mistranslated “Kosmos” is resurrected through another lens.
Victoria Guerra
Cosmos
Andrzej Zulawski, 2015
Cinematography | Andre Szankowski

“Revolutions, wars, cataclysms — what does this foam mean when compared to the fundamental horror of existence? …My literature must remain that which it is. Especially that something which does not fit into politics and does not want to serve it. I cultivate just one politics: my own. I am a separate state.” — Witold Gombrowicz, Diary. Published 1988.

The improved translation helped me in understanding that much of my frustration was something Gombrowicz intended. The characters navigating within his Kosmos are never fully fleshed out. We know that our protagonist, Witold  has trouble waiting to crush him back in Warsaw. We also know that Fuks hates his boss. But we never know what the trouble is or why the boss is hated. In fact we are given limited information about every character. The novel’s extremes and paranoias begin to feed the reader’s imagination. Every action and decision seems to be a reaction to matters we can never fully understand. This vastly improved translation offers more insight into Gombrowicz’s complexity but it also grants permission to not second-guess the awkward phrasing.

The new English translation for Kosmos provides an entirely different read. In the novel two young men seek refuge from the pressures and hardships they experience in Warsaw. They escape the city to what they anticipate will be the nourishing warmth of the country, but they arrive with mutual respective existential crisis and life fatigue. They will soon face a series of random incidents that begin to shift Wiltold further into paranoia, existential crisis as he feels threatened. Gombrowicz brings humor into the equation. Paranoias, fears and angst begin to leap off the charts of rationality. The characters magnify the situations and incidents. They soon feels less coincidental and can be assumed to be intended threats. Witold is unable to consider these incidents as “random.” The unexpected chaos signals pending doom.  His ideas of existence and identity are as fragile as they are extreme.

“Tolstoy wrote that our biggest mistake is to confuse ‘the pretty’ with ‘the good.'”
Jonathan Genet
Cosmos
Andrzej Zulawski, 2015
Cinematography | Andre Szankowski

“Isn’t it true? I thought, that one is almost never present, or rather never fully present, and that’s because we have only a halfhearted, chaotic and slipshod, disgraceful and vile relationship with our surroundings.” — Witold Gombrowicz, 1965

Boris Neleop interviewed Zulawski after Cosmos had received its world premiere at Locarno International Film Festival receiving the Best Director honor. Neleop discussed the difficulty of finding accurate translations of Kosmos. The director agreed and pointed out that the film was based from the novel’s original Polish language.

“Luckily, I’m Polish so I can read it. More luckily still, words like “bleurgh” in Gombrowicz mean nothing. What is it? Alban Berg, the composer? A cliff maybe? But in French it means the retching sound—bleurgh. Meaning you want to vomit. If you see a bad movie and someone asks you how it was, that’s what you say: bleurgh. So, it’s a happy coincidence.”

Neleop attempted to engage the artist into a discussion regarding what he perceived to be a shared sort of spasmodic manner in both Gombrowicz’s novel and the great filmmaker’s work. Zulawski disagreed with the connection and seemed intent on avoiding the spasmodic with either work.

“I don’t agree with you. I don’t think Gombrowicz is spasmodic: he’s quick, he’s rapid, he’s short and extremely rhythmic and… Do you know the word “caustic”? His writing is never hysterical. It’s caustic. It’s galloping but dry. I don’t think the actors are spasmodic at all. They are in their own delirium, but for them this delirium always has a profound logic. It’s not a bunch of mad men in an asylum. They are petit bourgeois. Witold wants to write a novel until he falls in love with this girl, who never has anything intelligent to say. His relationship with his young friend is really close, almost homosexual. So, it’s a complicated little cosmos.”

Andrzej Zulawski, 2014
Photograph by Marek Szczepanski

In answering a question regarding his decision to lift the novel out of its pre-war Polish context and moving it to 21st Century Portugal where a group of French people are living, Zulawski responded:

“If Cosmos had been filmed according to the novel, it would’ve been a very depressing and ugly film. Why the hell should I see those terrible people? Sounds like a basically stupid question. It’s not. It’s like life. Why should I spend my life with ugly stupid petit bourgeois people? I won’t. I won’t spend my life in Hollywood either. I don’t like these people, I don’t like their stories. So it leaves you to stay alone for fifteen years. In my forest.”

Zulawski’s rejection of cinematic norms is nothing new, but after he made La fidélité he retreated. That film was released in 2000. He never retreated into a forest of seclusion, but it would be fifteen years before he made Cosmos. His return to cinema was not a safe one. Adapting a complex work like the Polish novel, Kosmos, was never going to be an easy cinematic proposition. And while his final film does articulate itself with some newly discovered levity, Cosmos has a great deal in common with some of his key works.

“Love me.”
Romy Schneider
That Most Important Thing / L’important c’est d’aimer
Andrzej Zulawski, 1975
Cinematography | Ricardo Aronovich

This film’s title is actually translated as The Most Important Thing is Love and Romy Schneider’s performance would have been enough to secure the film’s place in French film history. But there is far more continued within the frames than an iconic actor’s work. The film marked a new turn in filmmaking. Zulawski’s examination of the artist finding fulfillment in France’s mid-1970’s theatre scene leaves a mark. It is not so much the point of the movie that matters but they way in which that point flows off the screen. Visceral, angry, obsessive, compulsive and often frantic — L’important c’est d’aimer takes the concept of a tragic love story to poetic heights. The film’s fever-pitched passion and energy haunt the viewer long after the film ends. A contemplation regarding abysmal cinematic opportunities, the protagonist is often looking directly into the audience. While the film is realism it wants to push itself off the screen, into the theatre and run rampant. The characters Zulawski presents are not really all that odd, but the way in which they move, speak and propel is most assuredly eccentric.

“It doesn’t hurt.”
Isabelle Adjani goes beyond the distance…
Possession
Andrzej Zulawski, 1981
Cinematography | Bruno Nuytten

Isabelle Adjani gave Zulawski the performance of a lifetime in one of the most confounding films of all time. No one was prepared for 1981’s Possession. Adjani’s work on this film was so taxing that it triggered a very real emotional break. It only takes one viewing to underscore this as valid truth. Adjani was dancing on a high wire without a net. Zulawski was able to inspire her to start her performance with emotional hysteria set at Level 5 and then required her to turn it up to Level 21 before the experimental film comes to a crashing end. It is a performance that has to be seen to be believed. Possession remains a testament to the talents of both the leading actor and its creator.

There are several ways to interpret Zulawski’s 1981 film. At its most obvious level it is an exorcise in Horror Surrealism hinged to turmoils of the psycho-sexual. And, from another perspective, it is a metaphorical depiction of divorce. And it is a matrimonial breakup that takes on apocalyptic proportions. Possession is completely unique, surreal and metaphorical study of identity it extreme crisis. And it is fueled by an inhuman and intolerable repression of control. This control might be that of a stifling marriage or one propelled by government control. Or it could be a combination of both. It doesn’t matter how one chooses to interpret Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession — it works from any vantage point.

The passage of time has not dulled its sharp edges. The special effects and gore are still jaw-dropping. This is an Art Film that has become Cult and it continues to spark provocative reaction. It took decades for this very personal film to find its audience. There are several different versions of Possession floating around — all the result of censorship. Mondo Vision beautifully restored this film several years back. It is an essential film for any fans of Surrealism and Horror.

“Are you lost?”
Francis Huster is the idiot gone mad with love.
L’amour braque / Mad Love
Andrzej Zulawski, 1985
Cinematography | Jean-Francois Robin

Andrzej Zulawski’s adapts Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot in a neon-drenched fever dream. 1985’s L’amour brace’s characters, sets, cinematography, editing and acting indicate that we might have landed in some alternate world. The film moves as if it was pulsating forward via an amphetamine, cocaine and whiskey fueled injection of psychotic convulsions. Zulawski’s experimental film is a twisted Neon and most certainly avant-garde. The film is violent, but the violence never feels “real” and the graphic sexuality is presented in paradoxically restrained ways. The only time the film seems to be able to slow down is when Sophie Marceau and The Idiot consummate to a point of erotic “enjoyment” — And, even then, it almost feels like the camera is so jacked-up it can barely wait to continue it’s frenzied trajectory.

Easily one of the most stylistically influential films to ever come out of French cinema — Kathryn Bigelow and Christopher Nolan among them. And it had an impact on music videos of the day. This world of thieves, addicts, artists, whores, drug dealers, pimps, terrorists, anarchists, perverts and lovers is chaotic but somehow organized. Mutually-conflicted screeching rants, dances and terrorism form into a sort of dancing race against time. Zulawski seems to be inspecting everything from political activism, perversion, addiction, insanity, rage, the theatre, criminal motivation, rebellion, sex and love — but through a camera that is dependent on hallucinogenics for vision. Like Possession — L’amour braque is completely unique unto itself. It is safe to state that no other filmmaker will manage to make a movie remotely like these two.

“That’s why there are common saints. God’s morons with a soul but empty brains.”
Boguslaw Linda and Iwona Petry fall into mutual insanity…
Szamanka / She-Shaman
Andrzej Zulawski, 1996
Cinematography | Andrzej Jaroszewicz

Andrzej Zulawski returned to Poland for 1996’s Szamanka / She-Shaman. Filmed in the newly freed Poland, the director brought the level of intense sexual obsession beyond expectation. It earned the nickname The Last Tango in Warsaw. While it is true that this film pushes further with graphic sexuality, it is seldom actually erotic. Boguslaw Linda and Iwona Petry push themselves to the extremes that are defined within the script. This might very well be the most challenging of Zulawski’s work. The cinematic provocation is not within the frantic obsessive actions and sheer frenzy, but lies far deeper within the film’s political and philosophical context. The two protagonists pursue their sexual and existential needs toward a deeply nihilistic end. Szmanka aches toward a brilliance that is almost impossible to endure.  Inexperienced actress, Iwona Petry, is near brilliant in her role, but she opted to end her acting career after Szamanka‘s release. Another interesting example of an artist agreeing to join the director on his journey but emotionally exhausted to the point of breaking once arriving at the destination.

Capturing “reality” in photography while emotional intensity pushes it out of frame.
Sophie Marceau and Pascal Greggory
La fidélité / Fidelity
Andrzej Zulawski, 2000
Cinematography | Patrick Blossier

Zulawski’s La fidelity / Fidelity was released in 2000. The film’s plot is more conventional, but once again his characters burn with almost convulsive urgency. This film forges a path that left many viewers cold. Its highlight is Zulawski”s great love and former muse, Sophie Marceau. She is brilliant in the role and her director understands how to capture not only her beauty but her energy. Years later I remember thinking that it seemed a pale sort of entry to serve as this filmmaker’s final work. Luckily it wasn’t.

Available from Mondo Vision
La femme publique
Andrzej Zulawski, 1984
Cinematography | Sacha Vierny

My admiration for Andrzej Zulawski runs deep and it is based within the realm of the personal. He was a brilliant artist who refused to be repressed, suppressed or held to any strict rule when it came to his art. And despite what some have attempted to insinuate, Zulawski was an admirable and kind person. His heart and passion shine through all of his films. Zulawski was always reaching into, under, over and well above the human need for love and understanding.

Even within the bleakness of Possession and Szamanka beats the heart of a very human filmmaker. I’ve decided not to touch on Diabel, La femme publique or On the Silver Globe  — these three films are unique masterworks that I am unable to address in a short blog. I will note that these three films are not really the best starting points for a Andrzej Zulawski neophyte, but then again — maybe they exceptional places in which to take that first plunge.

Victoria Guerra
Cosmos
Andrzej Zulawski, 2015
Cinematography | Andre Szankowski

Boris Neleop’s attempt to engage Zulawski in a conversation about “spasmodic” characters is valid. Nearly all of Zulawski’s characters are extreme. While everything around them might be pushing inward to restrict / oppress — his characters refused to stay within the bounds of circumstances had designed. The need for knowledge, satisfaction, love and understanding leave them no choice other than to be extreme.

This auteur was always a bit sensitive when pressed to discuss the hyper energy or over-the-top passion found in his films. A word like “spasmodic” would make Mr. Zulawski recoil. He shut this sort of commentary so far out of his mind that consideration was no loner possible.

Mr.Neleop is correct: Witold Gombrowicz’s characters are a bit, well, spasmodic. And I suspect that it was their very nature that attracted the great director.

Victoria Guerra
Cosmos
Andrzej Zulawski, 2015
Cinematography | Andre Szankowski

Zulawski had grown up with Gombrowicz’s literary work. My initial knee-jerk reaction toward Zulawski adapting Gombrowicz was that these two thinkers formulated thought in direct opposition to the other. I do not think Gombrowicz liked people. He thought and wrote about the existential, but these pursuits seemed formed from an essential repulsion toward humanity. This is interesting because his fiction is more than a little autobiographical. The way in which Gombrowicz creates the characters of his Kosmos is not kind. Zulawski’s entire film career was focused on the darker aspects of human nature — yet he loved people. He was a fighter and a rebel, but he was never anti-social. And he most certainly was not a pessimist. And, unlike Gombrowicz, he was not vain or concerned when it came to criticism or reward.

She paints her lips as if with blood because she really wants to be an actress…
Cosmos
Andrzej Zulawski, 2015
Cinematography | Andre Szankowski

“I’m scared of the forests. In the midway of this mortal life I found myself in a gloomy world, astray. Gone from the path and even to tell, that forest, how robust its growth, which to remember only, my dismay. Renews in bitterness not far from death. All else will I relate discovered there.”

Witold is frantically walking through the edge of a forest. Jonathan Genet has the look of someone from another era, but we already know that Zulawski’s Witold is a 21st century character. At first glance he could be a European fashion model, but his behavior is based within panic. He seems to be consistently on the verge of a mental break. When we meet Zulawski’s Fuchs, played by Johan Liberia, we discover they have traveled in a nice car. Fuchs’ name has been altered in spelling but he is still trying to escape the tyranny of two horrible bosses. In this new universe we know that his employers are high-end fashion designers.

While Wiltold is fragile and paranoid, Fuchs is robust and seemingly up for just about anything. Both behave in ways that lean toward the aberrant. Wiltold wants only to study, but he detests what he studies. Fuchs is primally focused on off screen violent sexual conquests. He reassures his friend that he plays safe, but bleeding wounds, bruises and other bodily issues are scars to his masochistic tendencies. And while it is never fully stated, these two friends would appear to share a bond that goes further than brotherly love. There are hints of a mutual sexual attraction and romantic fondness.

Something sinister is going on!
Jean-Francois Balmer, Sabine Azema and Johan Libéreau
Cosmos
Andrzej Zulawski, 2015
Cinematography | Andre Szankowski

Here, in Zulawski’s Cosmos, the two friends have run from France to Portugal. Fuchs is more lighthearted but still aches. Witold’s neurotic need to examine every move / object under his philosopher’s magnifying glass fractures his grasp of reality. The first thing Wiltold experiences after he secures his navigational balance is an encounter with a forest. It is one of the aspects of the world he hates most. As he rushes through the wilds of this forest he encounters the first of many grotesque encounters — a dead sparrow dangling from a string laced noose.

Soon he will discover ghost-like stains upon his rented room’s ceiling. These stains seem to be point toward something.

Fuchs also notices but is more curious than repulsed. The shape of a rake appears in the stain — and soon they discover an actual rake that directs their gaze upward to two small planks of wood hanging from a tree. The planks are tied together and hang by the same string from which the sparrow hangs. They hear talk of a chicken that was spotted hanging not too far away, but they never see it. And thus Wiltold and Fuchs begin to play a paranoid sort of game to attach meaning to these seemingly random signs. The game leads to an axe, a hammer, murder, death and metaphysical omens.

Madame is just overexcited…
Sabine Azema
Cosmos
Andrzej Zulawski, 2015
Cinematography | Andre Szankowski

A murdered cat hangs in the courtyard of the Bed and Breakfast. An eccentric married couple have been renting two of their rooms to keep up with mounting expenses. The wife, called Roly-Poly in the Polish novel, is played with goofy  nervous energy by the ever stylish Sabine Azema. We never hear her referred to with the novel’s cruel nickname. Here she is known as Madame Woytis. We soon notice that the female head of the house has a tendency to abruptly shut off in mid speak / movement. Frozen like a photograph. Her beautiful daughter explains, “Oh, it happens to her when ever she gets overexcited.”

The daughter is Lena who is married to a seemingly successful business man. He seems to be in constant meetings with a mysterious Russian client. Wiltold is immediately vexed by Lena. But it is her niece, Catherette, with whom he is smitten. Catherette has taken the position of housekeeper. She is devoted but worries her aunt, Madame Woytis, because she refuses to have her mutilated lip cosmetically re-defined. We are told she was in a bus crash. But her mutilation looks more biological in origin. Her lip holds an entrancing mix of disgust and erotic curiosity for both Wiltold and Fuchs.  The male head of the home is Lena‘s stepfather, Leon, played with unhinged lunacy by Jean-Francois Balmer.

“Tolstoy wrote that our biggest mistake is to confuse ‘The Pretty’ with ‘The Good.'”
Victoria Guerra and Clementine Pons
Cosmos
Andrzej Zulawski, 2015
Cinematography | Andre Szankowski

Interactions with the family are beyond eccentric. This is a house of organized lunacy and chaos. When Wiltold meets Lena they shake hands maniacally and for an extended time. Soon they are “secretly” copying each other’s animated hand movements. But their odd flirtation is painfully over-the-top. Yet everyone around them is too preoccupied with their own strange non-senscial conversations that only Fuchs notices. The antics of this family appear and sound like something one would see in a  slapstick comedy. There is only one catch: none of it is funny. It is simply strange.  

Unlike Gombrowicz, Zulawski has no interest in making us laugh. He aims to throw his audience off balance. As frantic action and illogical dialogues ape the gestures/sounds of Keystone Cops — the film quickly forms into absurd surrealism. And yet, the film’s cinematography and musical score tease that we are watching some fucked-up romantic mystery. And these are romances and mysteries that seem unsolvable.

As omens of sinister consequence begin to mount the two visitors only become more confused. Wiltold takes a worrying turn when he starts to adapt to sinister cruelty. Ants roam through their food, slugs slither in butter, creepy beetles crawl out of Madame Woytis‘ soup, animals are killed, midnight axe chopping, mutilated lips, fever dreams and a priest who lets loose a swarm of flies when he drops his pants — all of which formulate a sense of doom. Witold is certain that this pending doom threatens to push him into The Void.

When tragedy does strike it fails to register as anything of consequence to the family. Leon takes to the wilderness singing out into what he points out is The Void.

“Why seek the hand of another when we have our two selves?”
Cosmos
Andrzej Zulawski, 2015
Cinematography | Andre Szankowski

At the film’s mid-point Wiltold has abandoned his studies. Instead he obsesses over Lena and her family. He becomes a willing participant in the sinister happenings that bother him. He turns to philosophical rhetoric for comfort, but begins to chart ideas into some vague sort of story. When we finally see a bit of his writing it is presented on his laptop screen. It is in French and not translated for non-French speakers, but it translates as:

“The weight of here and now has become, like the beurk, decisive.”

This is in reference to the nausea that begins to overpower Wiltold. Of course we think that Wiltold is writing a story, but there are more than a few hints that he is as motivated by cinema as philosophy. Zulawski has Wiltold and Fuchs poke fun at his own films. At one point it is mentioned that all of these strange happenings might make a good book, but Wiltold disagrees and figures it wold serve better as a movie. Zulawski’s cinematic puzzle ultimately tosses us into meta-film, but this is not an easy-out. It is the only resolution available for Witold, Fuchs, Lena and all involved.

Zulawski takes a poke at Gombrowicz. Of course he has been poking all along. When Fuchs offers a suggestion to the mysteries that have taken place, Witold pulls a bit of met-fiction by explaining his name:

“There’s a reason I have Gombrowicz’s first name. He never knew how to finish his novels nor their meaning.”

Surreal, absurd, bizarre and without end. Welcome to Andrzej Zulawski’s Universe…
Cosmos
Andrzej Zulawski, 2015
Cinematography | Andre Szankowski

Andrzej Zulawski has said that Cosmos was not only his weirdest film — it was one of the strangest films he had ever seen. I do not agree, but his Cosmos does indeed present an alternative universe. And it forms and is presented in a bizarre range of ways and manner. There is an offer of love, but this universe refuses understanding. Zulawski’s Cosmos is simply idiosyncratic and would far prefer to leave its inhabitants with their own conclusions. But they should never give up or jump off into The Void. This universe is simply too magically odd to skip.

Find Boris Neleop’s interview with Andrzej Zulawski —  here

Mondo Vision’s restored Andrzej Zulawski’s films http://www.mondo-vision.com

Matty Stanfield, 11.22.2016